THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

Pe'rigord 


-r^j: 


X 


AFTER  THE  PEACE 


By  the  Same  Author 

THE  RUSSIAN   WORKER'S   REPUBLIC 


AFTER  THE   PEACE 


BY 
HENRY  NOEL  BRAILSFORD 


SPECIALir  REVISED  FOR  TBE  AMERICAN  EDITION 


W 


NEW  YORK 
THOMAS  SELTZER 

1922 


Copyright,   1922,  by 
THOMAS  SELTZER,  Inc. 


All  Rights  Reserved 


PBJNTPD   IN   TIJE   UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 


bTo 


CI.. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction. 

FAQB 

Can  Capitalism  Feed  Europe?     ......      9 

Chapter  I 

The  Politics  of  Babel 27 

the  economic  decline 30 

a   strategical   settlement 34 

the    balkanization    of    EUROPE 45 

Chapter  II 
The  Concentration  of  Power 54 

BRITISH     sea-power 57 

FRENCH     MILITARY     POLICY 6o 

BRITISH    AND   FRENCH    AIMS 63 

THE    RULE    OF    THE    ALLIES 73 

THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  ALLIANCE 80 

Chapter  III 

An  Echo  of  Malthus 85 

COAL 88 

THE     INDEMNITY '93 

EXPLOITATION      .       .       .       , -99 

Chapter  IV 
How  WILL  Europe  React? 105 

the    SOCIAL    revolution IO9 

TOWN    AND    COUNTRY II7 

THE    MILITARIST    REACTION I27 


C  *'>  Q  -^  n  r^ 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  V 

FAGS 

The  Mandates  and  the  League   ......  I35 

AN    INTERNATIONAL    CIVIL    SERVICE    .       .       .       .       .    137 
THE    POLITICS   OF   OIL •    14^ 

Conclusion  ...,-....••    ••-    •     •     •  ^4o 


INTRODUCTION 
CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE? 

Is  the  capitalist  system  breaking  down  as  -a  method 
of  production?  The  question  may  sound  to  most 
readers  -absurd,  and  when  it  is  put  in  its  concrete 
form,  it  may  appear  more  absurd  still.  Are  we 
nearing  a  point,  within  a  few  years,  when  it  will  be 
generally  evident  that,  under  the  capitalist  system, 
we  can  no  longer  obtain  the  food,  fuel,  clothes  and 
houses  necessary  to  maintain  the  dense  populations 
of  Europe  at  a  civilized  level  of  comfort  and  well- 
being?  In  Central  Europe,  in  Italy  and  in  Russia 
all  intelligent  men  and  women  have  been  forced,  by 
the  dire  experience  of  privation,  to  put  this  ques- 
tion, and  to  answer  it  according  to  their  lights.  In 
this  country,  though  we  are  alarmed  by  the  fall  in 
the  real  value  of  money,  and  know  that  high  prices 
mean  the  scarcity  of  goods,  our  case  is  still  so  far 
endurable  that  few  of  us  have  begun  to  question 
the  ability  of  a  society  based  on  profit  as  its  motive 
force,  to  provide  us  with  our  daily  bread.  Even 
to  those  who  have  seen  something  of  the  present 
plight  of  the  Continent,  the  question  may  seem  au- 

9 


lo  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

dacious.  It  is  so  much  easier  and  so  much  less  dis- 
turbing to  say,  what  is  true,  that  the  visible  decHne 
of  material  civilization  on  the  Continent  is  due  to 
a  protracted  war,  a  rigorous  blockade  and  a  bad 
peace.  These  are  the  immediate  causes  of  the  short- 
age of  goods.  But  what  if  the  war,  the  blockade 
and  the  peace  are  themselves  the  result  of  forces 
and  ways  of  thinking  inseparable  from  capitalist 
Imperialism?  Perhaps  in  this  savage  war  and  this 
merciless  peace  our  capitalist  society  has  revealed  a 
lack,  that  is  suicidal,  of  the  spirit  of  fraternity  and 
mutual  aid.  Perhaps  it  is  this  moral  fault  which 
discloses  itself,  slightly  here,  but  tragically  on  the 
Continent,  in  the  shortage  of  bread,  clothes  and 
houses. 

All  of  us  have  felt,  if  only  in  a  moment  of  revela- 
tion, as  we  passed  the  beggar  in  the  road  or  looked 
into  the  dreary  dilapidation  of  a  slum,  that  these 
broken  lives  and  inhuman  streets  condemn  our  whole 
social  system.  It  is,  or  was,  however,  a  solid  struc- 
ture. Whatever  the  saint  or  the  poet  might  see  in 
the  case  of  the  beggar,  the  fact  was,  and  still  is, 
that  our  capitalist  society  did  survive  acres  of  slums 
and  thousands  of  beggars,  long  crises  of  unemploy- 
ment and  years  of  scarcity.  In  spite  of  all  this,  it 
did  produce  the  goods.  Populations  survived  and 
multiplied,  and  on  the  whole  the  general  level  of 
comfort  and  education  tended  to  rise.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  scale  and  degree.     Can  this  same  capitalist 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    n 

civilization  survive  the  lapse  of  whole  nations  into 
a  slum  existence  ?  We  used  to  speak  of  the  "  sub- 
merged tenth  "  among  ourselves.  The  problem  now 
is  of  the  submerged  half  in  Europe.  Poverty  on 
this  scale  raises  the  general  question.  As  the 
months  and  years  go  by,  with  their  risks  of  fresh 
wars  and  revolutions,  can  this  capitalist  system, 
which  has  shown  itself  so  egoistic  and  so  predatory, 
revise  what  it  has  done,  reverse  the  working  of  these 
motives,  and  make  of  Europe  once  more  a  habitable 
Continent?  Or  will  the  verdict  of  time  and  expe- 
rience, given  not  in  cold  blood,  but  amid  the  despairs, 
bereavements  and  nervous  instability  of  semi-starva- 
tion, be  that  capitalism,  evolving  as  it  has  done  on 
militarist  and  Imperialist  lines,  can  no  longer  pro- 
duce the  goods  which*  the  millions  of  civilized  men 
require  ? 

This  way  of  stating  the  question  was  not  the 
usual  line  of  approach  before  the  war.  No  one 
had  then  the  audacity  to  doubt  that  a  capitalist 
society  could  continue  a  production  adequate  at 
least  to  the  demand  for  a  bare  subsistence.  There 
was,  to  be  sure,  some  economic  criticism  levelled  at 
the  admitted  element  of  waste  in  the  competitive  sys- 
tem. But  while  we  were  aware  that  capitalism  is 
vulnerable  to  an  economic  attack,  it  was  on  the 
whole  the  moral  aspect  which  chiefly  moved  us. 
People  who  never  dream  of  questioning  the  system 
which  expects  us  all  to  work  for  the  sole  end  of 


12  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

profit,  are  outraged  by  the  ugly  spectacle  of  "  profit- 
eering." 

The  war  brought  with  it  in  every  country  a  re- 
vival of  the  primitive  social  instincts.  We  were 
all  in  danger.  We  felt  through  several  years  as 
the  primeval  clan  or  tribe  must  have  felt,  in  its  vivid 
life  of  continual  peril  and  collective  ambition.  The 
class  struggle  was  repressed,  and  party  warfare  sus- 
pended. Even  at  home  the  nation  made  its  con- 
tinual appeal  to  the  motive  of  disinterested  service, 
and  that  motive  worked  amid  the  drab  surroundings 
of  capitalist  mass  production  in  munition  factories. 
In  the  army  men  were  released  for  four  years  from 
the  ordinary  working  of  economic  motives.  They 
acted  in  this  gigantic  business  of  warfare  as  primi- 
tive peoples  act  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  life. 
They  acted  under  the  spell  of  patriotic  duty,  and 
proved  that  the  deepest  thing  in  human  nature  is, 
not  the  competitive,  but  the  social  and  co-operative 
instinct.  The  average  man  is  taught  by  all  his  pas- 
tors and  masters  in  a  capitalist  society  that  the  hope 
of  gain,  whether  in  the  form  of  profits  or  salary,  is 
the  one  effective  stimulus  to  effort.  So  it  is,  under 
the  present  industrial  system.  Yet  something  awak- 
ened in  the  breasts  of  these  millions  of  men,  which 
caused  them,  under  the  spur  of  an  instinct  of  social 
service,  to  face  dangers  and  privations,  which  very 
few  would  endure  even  for  unlimited  gain.  To 
many  of  these  men,  though  they  were  not  fully  con- 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    13 

scious  of  it,  the  capitalist  system,  with  its  crassly 
self-regarding  motives,  must  have  seemed*  in  some 
dim  way  irrelevant,  even  incongruous,  when  they 
returned  to  it.  To  spend  these  four  years  in  risking 
life  and  health  without  thoughts  of  reward,  for  the 
mass  of  one's  fellows  dimly  envisaged  as  a  nation, 
and  then  to  come  back  to  serve  some  syndicate  in 
the  effort  to  extract  the  maximum  of  profit  with  the 
minimum  of  service  from  these  same  fellow-citizens 
regarded  as  consumers,  here  was  a  contradiction 
which  caused  many  a  man  to  feel  vaguely  ill  at  ease, 
even  when  it  did  not  set  him  thinking. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  the  motive  of  social 
service  which  speaks  in  all  the  more  vital  and  con- 
structive of  our  contemporary  labor  movements  — 
in  the  Building  Guild  above  all,  and  hardly  less 
clearly  in  the  miners'  demand  for  the  socialization  of 
the  mines.  A  new  w^ay  of  life  emerges  here,  some- 
thing more  broadly  -social  and  more  constructive 
than  the  inevitably  defensive  attitude  of  the  older 
trade  unionism.  The  other  side  of  these  movements 
implies  no  less  obviously  a  moral  criticism  of  cap- 
italism. Labor  demands  with  growing  insistence 
the  self-governing  guild  or  workshop.  It  feels  the 
vanity,  the  slightness  of  that  narrow  old-world  con- 
ception of  democracy,  which  has  ended  autocracy 
in  the  State  only  to  entrench  it  in  industry.  Where 
a  man,  by  the  mere  fact  that  he  owns  land,  mines 
or  machines,  can  dictate  to  his  felldw-men  the  con- 


14  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

ditions  of  their  daily  lives,  there  is  no  liberty.  Nor 
is  there  even  the  beginning  of  democracy,  while 
wealth,  by  its  ownership  of  the  press,  controls  our 
vision  of  the  world,  and  weaves  the  texture  of  men's 
minds,  as  a  loom  weaves  cotton.  The  sense  that 
we  are  neither  free  nor  -self-governing,  the  crafts- 
man's passion  to  express  himself  in  better  work,  the 
wish  to  substitute  the  motive  of  service  for  the 
motive  of  gain,  and  also,  perhaps,  that  unsatisfied 
prophetic  vision,  as  old  as  the  French  Revolution, 
which  tells  us  that  the  institutions  under  which  we 
live  depress  our  growth  and  stunt  our  development 
—  these  on  the  whole  are  the  motives,  all  of  them 
ethical,  which  favor  the  slow  growth  of  socialistic 
thinking  and  organization  in  Great  Britain,  A  So- 
cialism inspired  by  these  tendencies  will  be  academic 
and  idealistic.  It  does  not  feel  its  problem  urgent. 
It  has  to  admit  that  capitalism  does  on  the  whole 
provide  for  most  of  us  the  elementary  goods  of  life. 
It  is  critical,  but  mainly  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
higher  moral  and  social  ideal.  It  is  not  stung  by 
terror  or  need  into  violent  action.  Capitalism  does 
on  the  whole  deliver  the  goods. 

The  march  of  events  may  possibly  bring  even  this 
comfortable  country,  before  many  years  have 
passed,  to  ask  the  disturbing  question:  Can  capital- 
ism continue  to  produce  the  goods  ?  There  is  some 
anxiety  already.  In  the  poorer  middle  class  the 
standard  of  life  has  fallen  since  the  war.     There  are 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    15 

signs  among  the  manual  workers  that  the  motive 
of  earning  high  wages  no  longer,  for  some  reason, 
seems  to  be  an  adequate  stimulus  to  maximum  pro- 
duction. The  pressure  of  taxation  reveals  among 
the  employing  class  a  phenomenon  curiously  resem- 
bling the  policy  of  "  ca'  canny."  When  the  Excess 
Profits  Tax  was  increased,  there  is  said  to  have  been 
a  rather  noticeable  tendency  to  cancel  orders.  The 
State,  by  this  limitation  of  profits,  seems  to  have 
impaired  the  working  of  the  profit-making  motive. 
And  yet  the  State  has  not  begun  to  face  the  prob- 
lem of  paying  off  the  war  debt.  So  far  from  re- 
ducing, it  adds  to  it.  What  would  happen  if  the 
effort  were  really  made  in  earnest?  Every  one  of 
our  late  Allies  is  confronted  by  this  dilemma,  and 
shirks  it.  To  go  on  with  the  present  debts  and  the 
present  expenditure  means,  not  perhaps  for  us,  but 
for  every  other  people,  literal  bankruptcy.  To  tax 
adequately  on  the  other  hand,  might  rob  this  capital- 
ist society  of  the  only  motive  for  industry  to  which 
it  is  trained  to  respond  —  the  expectation  of  high 
profits.  It  is  possible  that  experience,  even  in  these 
islands,  may  one  day  confront  us  with  the  funda- 
mental problem  of  finding,  if  our  civilization  is  to 
survive,  an  alternative  to  capitalist  production. 

What,  if  a  victorious  capitalist  society  had  been 
capable  of  thought  for  the  common  good,  would 
have  been  its  policy  at  the  end  of  the  war?  The 
fact  which  overshadowed  all  others  in  the  world 


i6  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

was  the  stoppage  of  production,  the  immeasurable 
injury  to  all  the  means  of  production,  the  dearth  of 
goods,  and  all  that  this  means  in  misery,  starvation, 
ill-health  and  mental  disturbance.  A  bureau  of 
statisticians  in  Denmark  has  estimated  the  loss  of 
lives  due  to  the  war  at  about  40,000,000.  The  reck- 
oning includes,  of  course,  with  the  slain,  the  excess 
of  deaths  over  the  normal  mortality  among  the  civil- 
ian population  and  the  decrease  in  births.  The  war, 
in  short,  had  wiped  out  in  Europe  a  population 
equal  to  that  of  France.  There  was  the  first  and 
most  grievous  source  of  loss.  The  devastation  was, 
if  not  the  worst,  certainly  the  most  arresting  aspect 
of  the  whole  ghastly  panorama.  But  more  alarm- 
ing by  far  than  the  devastation  was  the  fact  that 
the  entire  industry  of  Central  Europe,  owing  to 
the  blockade,  stood  idle  for  want  of  raw  materials. 
Everything  was  short,  from  food  to  clothes,  from 
cattle  to  locomotives.  There  were  whole  regions, 
bigger  than  the  British  Isles,  notably  that  Russo- 
Polish  borderland,  which  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas 
gutted  in  his  retreat,  from  which  every  trace  of 
civilization  had  disappeared.  If  the  minds  of  our 
statesmen  could  have  shed  the  artificial  thinking  of 
the  war,  they  would  have  seen  their  problem,  in  terms 
of  goods.  To  talk  of  making  democracy  secure 
was  the  rhetoric  of  a  man  thinking  amid  American 
plenty.  What  democracy  wanted  then,  wants  still, 
and  will  want  for  years  to  come,  is  bread  and  sugar 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    17 

and  butter,  plain  warm  clothes,  medicines  and  soap, 
ploughs  and  lorries  and  locomotives,  coal  and  cotton 
and  iron.  The  problem  of  problems  was  to  supply 
these  things,  to  stimulate  and  organize  their  mass- 
production.  The  Allied  Governments  had  faced  a 
similar  problem  during  the  war,  when  they  organ- 
ized the  mass-production  of  shells.  The  problem  of 
peace  was  to  organize  the  production  of  necessary 
things  as  promptly,  and  on  an  even  larger  world- 
wide scale.  In  November,  19 18,  this  could  have 
been  done,  for  the  victors  had  unlimited  authority 
and  prestige.  Examine  what  in  fact  they  did,  and 
one  might  suppose  that  their  conscious  aim  had  been 
to  aggravate  and  perpetuate  the  shortage.  Instead 
of  turning  the  war-time  control  of  industry  to  this 
beneficent  purpose,  they  abolished  first  the  interna- 
tional and  then  the  national  controls  of  industry, 
shipping,  and  raw  materials.  Instead  of  turning  all 
the  metal  industries  to  the  making  of  locomotives, 
lorries  and  productive  machinery,  they  allowed  them 
to  revert  to  the  making  of  luxuries.  More  incred- 
ible still,  they  prolonged  the  blockade  of  Central 
Europe  for  nine  months,  and  tightened  it  (save  only 
in  the  supply  of  food-stuflfs),  as  it  never  had  been 
tightened  during  the  war.  What  was  Germany? 
An  enemy,  if  you  will,  a  sinner,  if  you  must  talk 
morals.  But  Germany  was  also  by  far  the  most  pro- 
ductive portion  of  the  Continent.  A  far-sighted,  in- 
ternationally-minded dictator  would  have  acted  in 


i8  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

precisely  the  reverse  way.  He  would  have  pourea 
raw  materials  and  fertilizers  into  every  German  port. 
He  would  not  merely  have  permitted  —  he  would 
have  insisted  —  that  every  lathe,  every  forge,  every 
loom  in  Germany,  should  work  to  its  fullest  capac- 
ity. He  would  have  spared  nothing  in  credits  to 
set  the  process  of  manufacturing  going.  As  for 
Russia,  one  need  not  pause  to  say  that  he  would  have 
avoided  the  lunacy  of  our  inglorious  expeditions 
and  our  subsidized  civil  war.  He  would  have  in- 
quired what  were  Moscow's  terms  to  resume  the 
production  and  export  of  grain,  timber,  flax  and  oil. 
So  far  from  setting  barriers  between  the  idle  fac- 
tory in  Berlin  and  the  hoarded  grain  of  South  Rus- 
sia, he  would  have  ordered  Berlin,  on  pain  of  a 
victor's  displeasure,  to  make  locomotives  for  Mos- 
cow in  exchange  for  Russian  wheat.  If  this  hard 
work  had  interrupted  the  diplomacy  and  the  elec- 
tions, the  map-drawing  and  the  reckoning  of  indem- 
nities, the  delay  would  not  have  irked  him.  One 
does  not  save  civilization  by  drawing  maps.  One 
saves  it  by  food  and  fuel,  by  the  work  which  re- 
stores sanity  to  the  artisan,  hope  to  the  mother,  and 
health  to  the  child. 

The  follies  of  this  first  winter  of  half-peace  pro- 
duced their  instant  effects.  While  the  Allies  were 
still  debating  the  first  of  their  series  of  Treaties,  the 
blockade  and  famine  brought  about  successful,  if 
short-lived,  communist  revolutions  in  Hungary  and 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    19 

Bavaria,  not  to  mention  momentary  attempts,  seri- 
ous enough  to  be  symptomatic,  in  several  German 
towns.  This  warning  taught  nothing  to  Paris.  It 
elaborated  a  peace  which  seemed  designed  to  per- 
petuate the  economic  death  of  half  a  continent. 
One  may  sum  up  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  in  a  sen- 
tence. It  robbed  Germany  at  once  of  the  means 
of  production,  and  of  the  motive  for  production. 
While  this  Treaty  stands  unrevised,  there  can  be 
no  resumption,  save  on  the  puniest  scale,  of  the 
activity  which,  in  the  generation  before  the  war, 
had  made  Germany  the  workshop  of  the  Continent. 
But  Germany,  the  reader  objects,  was  an  enemy,  a 
disturber  of  the  peace,  the  practitioner  of  an  espe- 
cially virulent  form  of  militarism.  Grant  the  moral 
case  against  her.  We  are  talking  economics.  Her 
ruin  is  the  biggest  factor  in  the  world-shortage,  as 
the  exclusion  of  Russia  from  the  European  grain- 
market  is  the  second. 

In  these  two  achievements,  the  laming  of  German 
industry  and  the  pushing  of  Russia  outside  the 
European  system  of  trade,  our  victorious  capitalist 
society  showed  a  lack  of  the  elementary  social  in- 
stinct of  self-preservation.  It  worked  against  life, 
against  creation,  against  production.  It  organized 
famine  and  produced  death.  It  showed  in  its  exer- 
cise of  patronage  a  total  disregard  for  the  interests 
of  world-production.  It  crushed  the  most  produc- 
tive people,  forgetting  that  production  carried  to  the 


20  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

high  level  attained  in  Central  Europe  can  be  the 
fruit  only  of  generations  of  education,  science  and 
organization.  It  showered  its  favors  on  Poles, 
Roumanians  and  Jugo-Slavs,  primitive  unschooled 
races,  not  indeed  without  their  own  charm  and  emo- 
tional genius,  who  never,  even  after  generations  of 
experience,  are  likely  to  replace  the  Germans  as  in-, 
dustrial  or  intellectual  workers. 

The  reader  may  grant,  perhaps,  that  this  rough 
statement  answers  to  the  facts.  A  combination  of 
circumstances,  the  war  itself,  its  undue  prolongation, 
the  inevitable  working  of  the  blockade,  the  natural 
prejudice  against  the  violent  Russian  revolution, 
the  personal  failings  of  statesmen,  the  passing  emo- 
tional exaltation  of  war-time  —  all  these  things  have 
deflected  us,  in  many  large  matters,  from  the  path 
which  cool  reason  would  have  dictated;  but  why 
blame  the  capitalist  -system?  It  is  always  easy  to 
dwell  on  the  accidents  of  history,  until  the  meaning 
of  its  processes  is  obscured.  If  the  Kaiser's  roman- 
tic vanity  had  been  proof  against  the  promptings 
of  his  military  clique,  or  if  the  Tsar  had  had  the 
intelligence  to  deal  with  those  generals  who  on  their 
own  confession  "  lied  "  to  him  about  the  Russian 
general  mobilization,  we  might  have  escaped  the 
war.  If  Mr.  Lloyd  George  could  have  resisted  the 
temptation  to  make  a  khaki  election,  or  if  Mr.  Wil- 
son had  been  less  of  a  moralist  and  more  of  an 
economist,  we  might  have  had  a  tolerable  peace. 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?    21 

On  a  broad  view,  however,  can  any  one  doubt  that 
the  war  itself  was  a  crisis  conditioned,  nay,  created, 
by  the  whole  course  of  our  capitalistic  development? 
These  vast  modern  industries,  whether  in  Lancashire 
or  Westphalia,  produced  year  by  year  their  immense 
surplus  of  profits.  This  rapidly  accumulated  cap- 
ital was  exported  every  year  to  primitive  countries, 
where  labor  is  cheap,  factory  laws  non-existent,  and 
native  governments  weak,  pliable  and  corruptible. 
Behind  this  exportation,  bargaining  to  secure  for 
each  national  group  the  opportunities  which  it  cov- 
eted abroad  in  concessions,  loans,  and  monopolized 
spheres  of  economic  interest,  stood  the  Great 
Powers.  They  str'ove  by  their  unending  competi- 
tion in  armaments,  each  to  make  a  Balance  of  Power 
favorable  to  itself.  For  what  was  power  desired? 
Power  meant  the  ability  to  secure  footholds  over- 
seas where  there  are  railways  to  build,  coolies  to 
exploit,  and  raw  materials  to  monopolize.  In  a 
world  that  lives  and  trades  and  thinks  within  the 
capitalist  system,  every  war  will  be  a  capitalist  war. 
One  may  dispute  over  its  immediate  occasion,  assess 
the  personal  responsibilities,  refine  upon  the  idealistic 
aims  which  doubting,  horrified,  war-weary  nations 
were  taught  to  entertain,  and  did  in  our  case  un- 
questionably cherish  with  entire  sincerity  in  the 
earlier  years  of  the  war.  The  fact  remains  that 
every  big  war  is  primarily  a  test  of  strength,  in 
which  the  world's  balance  of  power  is  adjusted  for 


22  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

years  or  decades  to  come.  If  you  would  judge  the 
true  character  of  a  man,  watch  him  when  fortune 
has  put  power  into  his  hands.  If  you  would  meas- 
ure the  morals  of  a  society,  scrutinize  it  in  the  mo- 
ment of  conscious  omnipotence.  If  you  would  know 
what  a  war  was  about,  study  the  terms  of  peace. 

We  know,  more  or  less,  what  sort  of  terms  the 
enemy  would  have  imposed,  had  he  won  the  war. 
The  Treaty  of  Brest-Litovsk  was  a  specimen.  The 
proposal  to  take  in  whole  or  part  the  mineral  re- 
sources of  Belgium  and  Northern  France  shed  a 
ray  of  light  upon  motives.  The  hand  and  brain  of 
this  German  capitalist  society  worked  with  a  cer- 
tain brutal  frankness.  Turn  to  the  Treaty  of  Ver- 
sailles and  its  sequels,  and  the  same  thinking,  half- 
strategic,  half -economic,  is  no  less  legible.  Here 
coal-fields,  there  oil-fields,  elsewhere  great  tropical 
estates  are  appropriated :  whole  chapters  rob  the  in- 
dtfstry  of  the  vanquished  of  its  tools,  its  ships,  its 
raw  materials,  its  iron,  its  coal.  Other  chapters 
stamp  out  the  agencies  and.  the  rights  on  which  its 
foreign  trade  had  depended:  the  "penetration"  of 
German  capital  outside  German  territory  is  ended 
once  for  all,  and  the  "  penetration  "  of  Allied  capital 
imposed,  organized  and  legalized  in  its  place.  A 
responsible  Liberal  Minister  blurted  out  in  Parlia- 
ment, midway  in  the  war,  the  truth  that  our  war- 
aim  was  that  German  trade  should  never  again 
"  raise  its  head."     That  intention  is  written  all  over 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEEEK  EUROPE?    23 

these  Treaties,  The  capitahstic  motive  is  revealed 
not  merely  in  the  fact  that  in  trade  and  territory  we 
took  much  for  ourselves.  It  was  revealed  even 
more  clearly  in  the  elaborate  measures  which  we 
adopted  to  ruin  our  chief  competitor. 

We  have  now  come  to  the  kernel  of  our  problem. 
We  started  by  asking  whether  capitalism  could  con- 
tinue to  produce  the  necessary  goods  on  a  scale  ade- 
quate to  ensure  modest  comfort  to  dense  populations. 
We -have  seen  that  under  the  pressure  of  the  competi- 
tive motive,  the  victorious  Allies  lamed,  if  they  did 
not  quite  ruin,  the  productive  capacity  of  Central 
Europe.  Is  there  really  any  anomaly  in  such  a 
phenomenon?  There  is  none.  The  aim  of  capital- 
ist industry  is  not  maximum  production,  but  maxi- 
mum profit.  Sometimes  the  two  may  coincide. 
Often  they  clash.  Brazil,  for  example,  has  an  or- 
ganized system,  regulated  by  law,  by  which  part  of 
the  coffee  crop  is  destroyed  every  year  if  it  exceeds 
a  fixed  level,  in  order  to  prevent  a  fall  in  prices. 
The  logic  of  tariffs  is  based  on  the  same  reasoning. 
Capitalism  does  not  aim  primarily  at  the  abundance 
of  cheap  goods.  It  aims  at  high  profits  and  great 
accumulations.  A  shortage  may  serve  it  better  than 
plenty,  and  its  history  is  full  of  cases  in  which 
trusts  and  rings  have  organized  a  shortage  and 
thriven  on  it.  When  the  Allies  ruined,  or  at  least 
paralyzed,  German  industry,  they  were  acting  in 
the  spirit  of  such  a  ring.     For  a  time,  and  for  lim- 


24  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

ited  groups  of  capitalist  producers,  these  tactics  may 
mean  immeasurable  gains.  To  the  whole  body  of 
consumers  in  the  world,  and  even  to  the  consumers 
in  Allied  countries,  this  policy  was  treason.  It  was 
an  irrational,  uneconomic  policy  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  general  good.  It  is  intelligible  only  on  the 
assumption  that  on  the  whole,  and  subject  to  many 
checks  and  concessions,  the  trade  policy  of  a  capital- 
ist state  is  based,  not  on  the  general  good,  but  on  the 
interest  of  the  ruling  capitalist  class.  Never  in  the 
world's  history  has  the  demonstration  of  this  sus- 
picion been  carried  through  on  so  vast  a  scale. 
Never  before  has  the  shortage  of  goods,  produced 
by  deliberate  political  sabotage,  confronted  us  with 
the  question  — ■  "  Can  capitalism  continue  to  supply 
the  world's  needs?  " 

It  is  no  passing  phase  that  we  are  considering. 
The  world  did  indeed  know,  in  the  middle  years  of 
last  century,  a  phase  of  capitalism  which  was  com- 
paratively free  from  these  evils.  The  Manchester 
School  sought  peace,  and  combated  the  belief  that 
the  ruin  of  its  neighbors  is  of  advantage  to  a  nation. 
It  was  the  fated  march  of  economic  Imperialism  in 
all  countries  which  led  to  this  war  and  this  peace. 
It  was  an  inevitable  development  of  the  capitalist  sys- 
tem, and  it  brings  with  it  its  shadow,  militarism. 
In  this  peace  they  have  perpetuated  themselves.  Oh 
this  basis  we  can  never  escape  the  dominion  of  force. 
Those  whom  we  have  wronged  will  scheme  how  to 


CAN  CAPITALISM  FEED  EUROPE?   25 

use  force  against  us.  We  shall  never  dare  to  allow 
Germany  to  recover  her  industrial  prosperity,  be- 
cause she  would  infallibly  use  it,  sooner  or  later,  to 
disrupt  our  system  of  fetters  and  handicaps,  to  re- 
write these  Treaties,  to  shatter  our  ascendancy.  We 
may  under  stress  of  the  dire  need  of  bread  patch  up 
a  commercial  truce  with  Russia,  but  here  again,  the 
fears  which  must  endure,  while  we  possess  the  bal- 
ance of  force,  will  forbid  Russia  also  to  acquiesce 
in  our  system  for  the  government  of  the  world.  In 
this  condition  of  danger,  wrong,  resentment  and 
fear,  the  world  cannot  evolve  a  system  which  should 
aim  at  maximum  production  and  general  prosperity. 
Capitalism  has  no  such  principle  of  solidarity  and 
fraternity. 

The  future  is  dark.  We  can  see  that  the  con- 
tinued pursuit  of  policies,  which  are  inimical  to  crea- 
tion, to  production,  to  life  itself,  may  in  the  end 
doom  the  capitalist  system.  It  does  not  follow  that 
an  alternative  -system  is  capable  of  realizing  itself. 
The  evolutionary  strategy  of  British  Guild  Socialism 
offers  its  high  hopes,  but  years  and  decades  must 
pass  before  it  could  so  completely  replace  capitalist 
industry  as  to  transform  the  motives  and  aims  of 
our  international  policy.  The  revolutionary  strat- 
egy of  Russian  communism  leads  in  its  first  struggles 
to  shock,  disorganization,  the  decline  of  production 
and  the  lowering  of  standards.  The  hostility  of  the 
capitalist  world  has  seen  to  it  that  this  gigantic  social 


26  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

experiment  shall  not  be  tested  under  favorable  con- 
ditions. Whether  it  can  succeed  by  its  own  prin- 
ciples of  co-operative  production,  in  vieing  with 
capitalistic  production,  remains  as  yet  a  theoretical 
possibility  and  nothing  more.  The  fact  that  con- 
fronts us  is  world-shortage,  the  dwindling  of  popu- 
lations, the  decay  of  industries,  the  twilight  of  civil- 
ization. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL 

Diplomatic  Conferences  have  rarely  in  European 
history  done  their  work  in  a  revolutionary  temper. 
They  have  tended  rather  to  patch  and  mend,  in  a 
spirit  of  conservatism.  The  main  business  of  the 
Congress  of  Vienna  was  to  undo  the  catastrophic 
changes  of  the  Napoleonic  era.  For  twenty  years 
before  it  met,  French  armies  had  obliterated  fron- 
tiers in  their  stride,  and  tossed  crowns  upon  their 
bayonets.  At  Vienna  the  victorious  monarchs  de- 
creed a  return  to  the  pre-revolutionary  age.  Even 
the  Congress  of  Berlin  did  much  to  minimize  the 
results  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war.  For  the  first 
time,  in  the  Peace  Conference  at  Paris,  Great  Pow- 
ers acted  in  a  radical  spirit.  To  call  the  work  done 
at  Paris  revolutionary,  might  be  to  flatter  the  archi- 
tects of  the  new  Europe.  The  ideas  which  guided 
them  were  neither  novel  nor  large.  No  new  philos- 
ophy of  life  or  politics  has  shaped  the  details  of  these 
Treaties.  To  the  doctrine  of  internationalism,  our 
statesmen  did  indeed  make  their  submission.  Hav- 
ing recognized  it,  they  buried  it  in  a  species  of 

27 


28  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

preface.  Between  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of 
Nations  and  the  Treaties  themselves,  there  is  only 
this  relationship,  that  both  are  bound  in  the  same 
volume.  The  ideas  which  have  shaped  these  Treat- 
ies are  those  of  the  old  world  which  shattered  itself 
in  the  war.  It  is  not  the  unbending  logic  of  the 
idealist  which  has  made  this  sweeping  settle- 
ment. Fear  and  ambition,  and  not  the  dynamite  of 
new  doctrine,  have  wrought  these  catastrophic 
changes. 

The  effect,  none  the  less,  baffles  the  spectator's 
imagination.  This  settlement  has  transformed  the 
daily  outlook,  the  habitual  scene  for  hundreds  of 
millions  of  human  beings,  A  dozen  new  independ- 
ent States  have  sprung  into  life  on  the  ruins  of  shat- 
tered Empires.  Those  are  rulers  who  were  rebels : 
Monarchy  survives  only  on  the  fringes  of  the  Con- 
tinent. The  imperial  governing  races  of  Austria 
and  Hungary,  accustomed  to  play  their  part  in  the 
high  politics  of  a  Continent,  enjoy  to-day  less  than 
the  status  of  the  smaller  neutrals.  What  was  the 
ruling  caste  in  Bohemia,  Posen  and  Transylvania,  is 
now  the  subject  race,  fain  to  cling  to  the  protection 
of  a  Charter  which  its  late  enemies  have  framed 
for  it.  The  Hapsburg  Empire  is  a  memory,  while 
the  Turks,  on  a  fragment  of  their  former  territory, 
must  bow  to  the  permanent  control  of  Christian 
Powers.  Poland  and  Greece,  inflated  into  minor 
Empires  by  the  favor  of  the  victors,  take  a  pre- 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  29 

carious  rank  among  the  secondary  Powers. 
To  these  external  changes,  there  corresponds  a 
profound  akeration  in  men's  minds.  MilHons  of 
men  of  the  German  race  who  had  for  fifty  years 
grown  accustomed  to  the  idea  that  their  energy,  their 
science,  their  gift  of  organization  had  made  them  a 
leading  power  in  the  world  and  the  first  power  upon 
the  Continent,  are  beaten  to-day  into  the  acceptance 
of  passivity.  The  fact  is  not  merely  that  their 
power  is  shrunken,  as  the  power  of  France  shrank 
after  1870.  They  are  incapable  of  action  in  any 
direction,  and  they  know  that  for  a  generation  their 
lot  is  to  obey.  The  hammer  has  become  the  anvil. 
It  is  difficult,  even  if  one  allows  one's  imagination  to 
play  upon  this  theme,  to  realize  the  mental  disturb- 
ance which  this  downfall  involves  in  the  life  of  the 
average  middle-class  German,  He  has  lost  the  am- 
bitions which  gave  to  existence  a  great  part  of  its 
meaning,  and  with  them  has  gone  in  some  measure 
his  personal  self-respect,  for  all  the  world  over,  the 
average  man  derives  much  of  his  self-confidence 
from  his  pride  in  the  society  to  which  he  belongs. 
A  defeat  so  catastrophic,  an  abasement  so  deep  as 
this,  shatters  not  merely  the  power  of  the  State,  but 
the  conventions  and  the  social  morality  of  its  mem- 
bers. The  German  bureaucracy  is  less  confident  and 
less  assertive  than  it  was,  but  it  is  also  much  less 
honest.  Its  pride  is  humbled,  but  with  its  pride, 
its  former  high  standard  of  duty  has  been  lowered. 


30  AFTER  THE  PEACE 


THE  ECONOMIC  DECLINE 

Large  as  are  the  political  changes  which  date  from 
the  victory  of  the  Allies,  they  are  trivial  in  com- 
parison with  the  economic  transformation.  Ger- 
many has  lost  all  but  a  fraction  of  her  mercantile 
marine,  and  three-fourths  of  her  iron  ore,  while 
her  coal  supply  has  dwindled  to  the  half  of  what 
it  was  before  the  war.  The  problem  of  the  im- 
mediate future  is  not  whether  Germany  can  recover 
any  part  of  her  world-power,  but  whether  she  can 
contrive  to  feed  her  present  population.  Desperate 
as  her  case  might  seem,  if  it  were  isolated,  it  is  al- 
most enviable  in  comparison  with  that  of  German 
Austria.  In  Vienna,  where  the  deaths  month  by 
month  are  sometimes  double  the  births,  a  great  city, 
with'  a  singularly  gracious  and  fruitful  civilization, 
is  literally  dying  out  under  our  eyes.^ 

1  Thus  the  vital  statistics  of  Vienna  gave  for  February, 
1920,  a  mortality  in  round  figures  of  4,000  against  1,800  births. 
Mr.  A.  G.  Gardiner,  in  one  of  his  moving  and  persuasive  arti- 
cles in  the  Daily  News,  has  given  figures  which  show  that  this 
ratio  of  two  deaths  to  one  birth  obtained  throughout  the  first 
twelve  weeks  of  1920  (5,044  births,  10,767  deaths).  According 
to  the  official  white  paper  [Economic  Conditions  in  Central 
Europe  (II).  Miscellaneous  No.  6  (1920,  Cmd.  641)],  the 
mortality  from  January  to  October,  1919,  was  32,288,  while 
the  births  numbered  19,612.  The  same  official  report  gives 
the  main  facts  about  the  conditions  which  explain  these  vital 
statistics.  In  peace  time  Vienna  used  to  consume  900,000  liters 
of  milk  daily.  The  average  is  now  30,000  liters  daily.  In 
other  words,  Vienna  has  milk  enough  at  the  normal  rate  to 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  31 

But,  indeed,  the  scene  which  presents  itself  to  the 
inquirer,  from  the  .Rhine  to  the  Volga,  varies  only 
in  the  shading  of  its  sombre  colors.  Everywhere 
the  war  and  the  blockade  have  produced  the  same 
results.  The  big  shaping  facts  are  the  economic 
facts,  and  these  differ  rather  in  degree  than  in  kind. 
Everywhere  coal  is  short,  and  with  this  shortage  the 
wheels  of  industry  slow  down.  Everywhere  raw 
materials  are  scarce  or  absent.  Everywhere  the 
sinking  of  the  currency  has  all  but  stopped  the  im- 
port of  foreign  goods.  Everywhere  the  railways 
are  disorganized  and  the  rolling  stock  worn  out. 
Everywhere  there  has  been  a  depreciation  of  all  the 
productive  machinery  of  civilization,  animate  and 
inanimate,  animal  and  human.  Nothing  has  been 
repaired  or  replaced  for  five  strenuous  years.  The 
creaking  machinery  lacks  oil.  The  traveller  who 
knew  the  orderly  strenuous  Germany  of  pre-war 
days  is  aghast  when  he  sees  outside  every  big  rail- 
supply  its  needs  for  exactly  one  day  in  every  month.  The 
official  ration  of  coal,  we  are  told,  is  about  half  a  cwt.  per 
family  per  month,  and  few  families  receive  even  this  amount. 
At  the  end  of  December,  1919,  the  official  food  rations  were : 
bread,  2^  lb. ;  flour,  9  oz. ;  fats,  4  oz. ;  meat,  4  oz.  per  head 
per  meek.  Sugar  and  potatoes  are  nominally  rationed,  but 
no  regular  distribution  could  be  made!  These  rations  would 
yield  1,271  calories  daily.  The  usual  consumption  of  a 
healthy  adult  in  full  work  is  about  3,000  calories,  and  the 
lowest  number  on  which  health  can  be  maintained  may  be 
2,300  calories.  Small  wonder  that,  as  this  report  states,  80  to 
85  per  cent,  of  the  children  up  to  three  years  of  age  in  the 
working  and  lower  middle  class  are  suffering  from  rickets. 


32  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

way  station  a  mortuary  of  locomotives,  where  hun- 
dreds of  once  valuable  machines  cumber  the  rails, 
rusty  and  useless.  The  fields  are  hungry  and  sterile 
for  lack  of  manure.  The  surviving  cattle  are  thin. 
The  horses  in  the  streets  look  like  skeletons.  The 
men  and  women  drag  themselves  along  listless  and 
anaemic.  The  relics  of  a  tradition  of  order,  clean- 
liness and  education  have  somewhat  arrested  the  de- 
cay in  Germany  and  Austria.  In  Poland,  which 
never  at  the  best  was  orderly,  educated  or  clean,  the 
scene  of  ruin  is  even  more  distressing.  Russia  pre- 
sents her  special  phase  of  the  general  breakdown. 
Revolution  has  introduced  its  own  peculiar  com- 
plications, but  the  same  mortality,  the  same  dearth 
of  materials,  the  same  decline  in  comfort,  wealth 
and  health,  may  be  found  in  "  red "  Moscow, 
"  white  "  Budapest,  and  colorless  Vienna.  Every- 
where the  manual  worker  sullenly  asks  himself 
whether  his  fate  and  that  of  his  children  will  be  to 
exist,  year  in,  year  out,  on  one-half  of  the  food 
allowance  necessary  for  health.  Everywhere  the  in- 
tellectual worker,  from  the  small  official  to  the  artist 
and  the  teacher,  faces  the  fact  that  his  home  standard 
of  comfort  has  sunk  below  that  of  the  organized 
artisans.  In  Germany  one  hears  of  a  group  of  "  in- 
tellectuals," including  former  University  lecturers, 
who  have  formed  a  co-operative  society  to  work  a 
mine  of  brown  coal  with  their  own  hands.  In  Aus- 
tria a  society  of  ex-officers  is  setting  up  its  members 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  33 

as  shoemakers,  while  a  foreign  charitable  organiza- 
tion appeals  for  gifts  of  old  clothes  for  the  profes- 
sors of  Vienna  University,  and  for  money  to  supply 
its  students  with  a  free  breakfast.  Allied  Italy, 
though  she  counts  herself  a  victor,  sends  her 
Premier  to  sit  on  the  Triumvirate  which  governs 
this  chaotic  world,  and  measures  the  annexations  and 
the  spheres  of  the  influence  which  are  her  share  in 
the  gains  of  the  war,  is  only  a  little  further  from 
bankruptcy  than  enemy  Germany.  Her  expenditure 
is  three  times  her  revenue.  To  bring  the  loaf  within 
the  purchasing  capacity  of  the  workers,  it  must  be 
subsidized,  and  sold  at  one-fifth  of  its  real  cost. 
Three  meatless  days  a  week  are  now  enforced  in 
Italy.  Poland's  case  may  be  measured  by  the  fact 
that  the  Budget  presented  in  the  autumn  of  19 19 
showed  an  expenditure  eight  times  the  revenue.  At 
first  these  signs  of  sickness  were  thought  to  be  tem- 
porary, and  every  one  looked  for  the  amendment 
which  the  formal  ratification  of  peace  would  bring 
with  it.  It  does  not  come;  it  does  not  even  begin. 
The  decay  of  civilization  is  a  phrase  easily  abused. 
It  means  in  this  connection  something  quite  definite 
—  the  gradual  abandonment  of  the  refinements  and 
all  the  intellectual  ambitions  of  life.  In  Russia  two 
years  have  passed,  thanks  to  the  paper  shortage, 
since  any  new  scientific  book  was  published.  In 
Austria  all  the  girls'  secondary  schools  are  closing 
for  lack  of  funds.     Everywhere  in  Central  Europe 


34  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

the  fall  of  the  exchange,  which  makes  it  impossible 
to  purchase  anything  in  the  currencies  of  the  West, 
has  set  up  a  veritable  intellectual  blockade.  Cen- 
tral Europe  is  isolated.  None  but  the  richest  of  the 
war-profiteers  can  afford  to  travel  abroad.  No 
newspaper  can  keep  a  correspondent  in  the  West, 
or  pay  for  telegrams  or  contributed  articles.  Nor 
can  University  libraries  or  learned  men  afford  to 
buy  even  scientific  books  abroad.  Intellectual  life 
has  become  bounded  within  national  frontiers  as  it 
was  never  before  in  the  history  of  Europe.  Under 
the  pressure  of  this  grinding  poverty,  sooner  or  later, 
unless  the  decay  is  arrested,  the  urban  civilization  of 
Europe  will  be  as  dead  as  the  culture  of  Babylon, 
and  there  will  survive  only  peasant  communities, 
narrow,  reactionary  and  clerically-minded. 

A  STRATEGICAL  SETTLEMENT 

When  one  turns  from  this  scene  to  the  frame- 
work which  the  Allies  constructed  for  it  at  Paris, 
the  first  impression  is  one  of  incongruity.  Few 
admirers  are  left  even  among  the  victorious  Allies 
of  this  fantastic  and  inhuman  peace,  but  perhaps 
its  strangest  characteristic  is  not  its  harshness,  but 
its  irrelevance.  It  was  a  peace  based  on  a  reading 
of  the  facts  which  had  gradually  shaped  itself  in  the 
early  months  and  years  of  the  war.  The  power  of 
the  German  war-machine  had  made  an  ineffaceable 
imprint  on  men's  minds.     Ludendorff's   arm  had 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  35 

been  omnipotent  from  Finland  to  the  Caucasus. 
Northern  France,  Belgium,  Venetia*  Roumania  and 
Serbia  were  still  counting  their  liberation  by  weeks. 
The  Conference  met,  moreover,  in  Paris,  and  re- 
freshed its  memories  by  visits  to  the  devastated  de- 
partments. A  saner  peace  might  have  been  dic- 
tated had  Marshal  Foch  actually  marched  into  Ber- 
lin, or  better  still,  if  the  Allies  had  revived  history 
by  meeting  in  a  new  Congress  of  Vienna.  In 
Vienna,  or  even  in  Berlin,  these  statesmen  would 
have  realized  how  complete  was  the  moral  and  mate- 
rial collapse  of  the  enemy  peoples.  Many  months 
passed  before  the  truth  was  realized.  No  one  would 
believe  that  Germany  was  starving,  until  our  sol- 
diers in  the  occupied  zone  protested  that  they  could 
bear  the  sight  of  it  no  longer.  Fabricated  tales 
were  still  circulated  of  the  flood  of  exports  which 
German  industry  had  ready  to  "  dump  "  upon  our 
market.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  pi'omising  the  electo- 
rate an  indemnity  of  24,000  millions  sterling,  may 
possibly  have  deceived  himself  as  well  as  the  voters. 
Above  all,  no  or  t  could  grasp  the  fact  that  the  mili- 
tary machine  was  really  broken.  We  seem  to  have 
had  no  conception  of  the  tcrific  efficacy  of  our  own 
blockade,  and  it  \/as  presuniably  because  we  dreaded 
either  a  revival  of  the  enemy's  military  power,  or 
else  a  too  sudden  revival  of  his  competitive  economic 
energy,  that  we  continued  this  blockade  for  nine 
superfluous  months,  after  the  Germans  had  signed 


36  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

an  armistice  which  rendered  -any  further  resistance 
impossible.  When  history  surveys  the  crimes  of 
both  sides  in  the  war.,  it  will  brand  this  continuance 
of  the  blockade  as  the  most  brutal  and  the  least 
excusable  of  them  all. 

In  point  of  fact  Germany  was,  during  these 
months  of  suspense,  adapting  herself  with  marvel- 
lous docility  to  the  prospect  of  that  Wilsonian  peace 
which  had  been  promised  her.  The  zest  in  arms 
was  long  ago  extinct.  Other  armies  were  demob- 
ilized: this  army  melted  away.  In  Poland,  when 
the  hour  of  collapse  arrived,  the  German  garrison 
tamely  allowed  itself  to  be  disarmed  by  the  boys  of 
Pilsudski's  secret  Socialist  army,  who  had  hardly  a 
rifle  among  them.  Some  even  trampled  on  their 
iron  crosses,  as  they  surrendered  their  weapons. 
Nowhere  in  the  world  did  the  entire  working  class 
gasp  out  its  "  never  again  "  more  fervently.  The 
press  of  Germany  teemed  with  articles  in  favor  of 
the  League  of  Nations.  She  clung  to  it  as  her  one 
rock  of  salvation.  As  for  Austria,  the  pacifism  of 
a  Quaker  Meeting  is  halting  and  half-hearted  com- 
pared with  the  furious  hatred  of  war  and  arms,  of 
violence  and  violent  men,  which  swept  over  the 
whole  class  of  manual  and  intellectual  workers.  Of 
bitterness  towards  the  victors  there  was  as  yet  no 
trace.  In  that  formative  hour  of  defeat,  the  mass- 
mind  of  Central  Europe  was  set  determinedly  to- 
wards peace  and  reconciliation,  and  had  the  Allies 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  37 

drafted  a  settlement,  honestly  based  upon  the  Four- 
teen Points,  which  looked  to  the  future  and  sought 
to  continue  a  new  world  free  from  the  domination 
of  force,  they  would  have  found  that  the  moral 
preparation  for  the  change  had  gone  further  in 
Central  Europe  than  in  any  other  quarter  of  the 
world. 

In  fact,  the  Allies  drafted  a  peace  which  looked 
only  to  the  past.  In  every  clause  one  can  hear  the 
accents  of  a  vengeful  fear.  This  peace  would  have 
been  explicable  had  it  been  imposed  on  the  Germany 
of  1914  —  a  Germany  still  penetrated  with  mili- 
tarism, still  venerating  its  "  War  Lord,"  contempt- 
uous of  democracy,  unbroken  in  spirit,  organized  for 
war,  and  teeming  with  unsquandered  wealth.  It 
was  the  Germany  of  1914  that  the  Allies  had  in 
mind  —  they  had  seen  no  other.  Applied  to  the 
Germany  of  1919,  half-starved,  pitiably  tame, 
equipped  with  her  new  Republican  forms,  governed 
by  a  semi-Socialist  Government,  and  so  poor  that 
she  barely  retained  the  decencies  of  life,  it  was  at 
once  cruel  and  ridiculous.  In  part,  a  sincere  dread 
of  German  militarism  survived  and  animated  the 
Treaty.  In  part,  it  must  be  ascribed  to  the  ambition 
of  the  French,  that  their  own  restored  military  as- 
cendancy should  dominate  the  Continent.  In  some 
degree,  since  the  French  were  bent  on  the  ruin  of 
Germany,  they  were  shrewd  enough  to  reckon  that 
the  passion  of  revenge  would  sooner  or  later  assert 


38  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

itself  among  the  conquered.  The  provocations  of 
militarism  are  not  always  the  result  of  unreflecting 
greed  and  vainglory.  Militarism  needs  a  danger. 
It  can  impose  its  own  caste  discipline  at  home  only 
if  there  is  a  peril  across  the  frontier  to  which  it  can 
always  point.  There  is  little  doubt  that  Bismarck 
consciously  exploited  the  question  of  Alsace  in  this 
spirit.  He  rejected  a  policy  of  conciliation,  because 
a  disaffected  Alsace  and  a  vengeful  France  were 
arguments  which  he  could  always  use  in  order  to 
resist  democracy  and  pacifism  in  Germany.  The 
same  calculations  may  have  influenced  some  of  those 
who  devised  the  peace  of  Versailles.  It  made  a 
danger,  and  skillfully  diffused  that  danger  over  the 
whole  map  of  Europe,  in  order  to  create  a  perma- 
nent league  under  French  leadership.  To  each  of 
the  minor  Allies,  from  Belgium  to  Roumania,  some- 
thing was  given,  which  must  keep  alive  against  her 
the  enmity  of  the  vanquished,  and  force  her  to  rely 
on  the  major  Allies  for  protection.  The  small 
nation  which  commits  a  wrong  against  its  neighbor 
forfeits  in  that  hour  its  independence.  It  must  rely 
on  stronger  Powers  to  ensure  to  it  the  enjoyment 
of  its  gains.  Strategy,  accordingly,  has  competed 
with  the  ordinary  economic  motives  of  Imperialism 
for  the  first  place  as  the  shaping  force  of  these 
Treaties.  German  militarism  was  smitten  to  the 
ground,  partly  by  physical  exhaustion  and  partly  by 
the  moral  revulsion  that  its  own  excessive  discipline 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  39 

had  brought  about.  In  the  Treaties  the  Allies,  leg- 
islating under  the  spur  of  memory,  laboriously  pro- 
ceeded once  more  to  slay  the  slain. 

Many  chapters  of  these  Treaties  tell  their  own 
tale.  The  strategical  motive  is  sufficiently  apparent 
in  the  clauses  which  dictate  the  one-sided  disarma- 
ment of  the  enemy,  provide  for  the  neutralization 
and  occupation  of  the  Rhine  provinces,  and  forbid 
for  all  time  the  revival  of  a  German  navy  or  air- 
force,  the  failure  to  impose  any  parallel  measure  of 
disarmament  on  other  States,  and  the  extreme  im- 
probability that  this  omission  will  afterwards  be 
corrected,  which  stamps  these  provisions  as  articles 
of  enslavement.  Nor  need  one  waste  space  in  point- 
ing out,  what  is  frankly  admitted,  that  strategy  alone 
explains  the  gift  to  Italy  of  the  purely  German  South 
Tyrol.  Strategy  also  and  not  nationalism  is  the 
basis  of  the  Italian  claim  to  dominate  the  Eastern 
shore  of  the  Adriatic.  A  careful  study  of  the  map 
would  reveal  repeated  instances  —  at  Eupen  and 
Malmedy,  at  Pressburg,  on  the  new  German-Polish 
frontier  —  of  this  preoccupation  with  military  ques- 
tions. The  draftsmen  of  these  maps  were  evidently 
under  no  delusion  that  they  had  fought  "  a  war  to 
end  war."  They  put  their  trust  not  in  the  new  ma- 
chinery of  the  League  of  Nations,  but  in  the  old 
classical  devices  of  the  impregnable  mountain  bar- 
rier, and  the  sea  channel  commanded  by  guns. 

It  was,  however,  in  the  dismemberment  of  Haps- 


40  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

burg  Dominions  that  the  strategic  motive  revealed 
itself  most  clearly.  We  all  recollect  those  alarm- 
ing propaganda  maps  which  in  the  later  years  of  the 
war  made  it,  even  in  popular  opinion,  what  it  cer- 
tainly was  in  its  diplomatic  origins,  a  struggle  for 
the  roads  of  the  East.  A  turning-point  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  Allied  war-aims  was  reached  when  Mr.  Wil- 
son, chancing  upon  one  of  these  maps,  based  the 
most  relentless  of  his  speeches  upon  it.  Here,  we 
were  told,  in  this  Berlin-Bagdad  railway  line,  was 
the  spinal  cord  of  the  enemy  organism.  Though  the 
Allies  used  the  doctrine  of  self-determination  to  jus- 
tify their  dismemberment  of  Austria-Hungary,  no 
candid  historian  will  deny  that  the  real  motive  which 
led  them  ta  recognize,  one  by  one,  the  claims  to 
separation  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  nationalities, 
was  less  a  regard  for  the  abstract  principle  of  nation- 
ality than  a  resolve  to  cut  Germany's  road  to  the 
East,  and  to  ring  her  round  with  a  galaxy  of  hos- 
tile States  moving  In  the  Allied  orbit.  One  need 
not  point  to  the  painfully  numerous  instances  in 
which  the  Allies  defy  the  doctrine  of  self-determina- 
tion in  their  own  dominions.  It  is  enough  to  show 
that  they  made  no  real  attempt  to  apply  it  honestly 
in  their  dealings  with  the  enemy.  They  have  made 
of  Poland  and  Czecho-Slovakia  composite  polyglot 
States,  packed  with  recalcitrant  and  reluctant  min- 
orities, which  repeat  on  a  somewhat  smaller  scale 
the  weaknesses  of  the  Hapsburg  Dominions.     The 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  41 

worst  of  these  cases  is  the  subjection  of  over  three 
milHons  of  Germans  to  Czech  rule.  It  is  sometimes 
impossible  in  Central  Europe  to  disentangle  the  races 
which  live  intermingled.  The  German  minority  in 
Bohemia  and  Moravia  lives,  however,  mainly  along 
the  fringes  of  these  provinces,  and  for  the  most  part 
in  compact  masses.  It  could  have  been  detached 
with  ease  and  united  in  the  north  to  Germany  and  in 
the  south  to  Austria.  It  called  in  vain  for  the  right 
to  decide  its  own  fate,  only  to  meet  with  the  reply 
that  the  Allies,  who  have  rightly  disregarded  his- 
tory in  their  other  dispositions,  were  bound  to  re- 
spect the  historic  borders  of  the  ancient  Bohemian 
kingdom.  Even  more  obviously  the  consequence  of 
strategical  thinking  was  the  refusal  to  permit  Ger- 
man Austria  to  follow  the  nearly  unanimous  desire 
of  her  population  for  union  with  Germany.  It  is 
true  that  the  League  of  Nations  has  theoretically  the 
power  to  sanction  this  union,  but  since  the  decision 
of  its  Council  must,  according  to  the  Covenant,  be 
unanimous,  it  is  obvious  that  France  alone  has  the 
power  to  veto  this  solution  for  all  time.  A  grosser 
or  more  partisan  violation  of  the  right  of  self-de- 
termination it  would  be  difficult  to  invent.  There 
is  only  one  sufficient  explanation  of  it.  The  central 
trade-routes  of  Europe,  by  rail  and  river,  pass 
through  Vienna,  While  Austria  is  kept  outside  the 
German  system,  the  Bagdad  railway  remains  under 
Allied  military  control,  and  Germany  is  kept  at  a 


42 


AFTER  THE  PEACE 


safe  distance  from  Turkey  and  the  Straits.  Each 
of  these  new  creations,  Poland,  Czecho-Slovakia  and 
the  greater  Serbia,  was  recommended  by  AUied 
propaganda  as  an  essential  "  barrier  "  or  "  bulwark  " 
against  "  Germanism,"  while  Poland  had  the  dub- 
ious felicity  to  be  a  barrier  against  Berlin  and  Mos- 
cow at  once.  The  work  has  been  done  with  mas- 
terly completeness.  No  train  runs  from  Berlin  to 
Bagdad,  nor  are  we  likely  in  our  day  to  see  one. 
Half  a  dozen  frontier  systems  intersect  the  route, 
and  at  the  stations  where  wheezy  engines  repose 
from  the  tasks  beyond  their  strength,  starving  chil- 
dren beset  the  empty  goods  yard,  and  throng  about 
the  carriages  of  the  waiting  local  trains,  with  their 
monotonous  cry  for  "  a  bit  of  bread." 

It  is  no  answer  to  such  criticisms  to  say  that  at 
the  moment  of  the  armistice  the  dismemberment  of 
Austria-Hungary  was  inevitable.  It  was  so  only 
because  the  Allies  had  already  made  it  so  in  their 
Secret  Treaties,  and  prolonged  the  war  until  their 
extremer  purposes  could  be  realized.  It  was  so 
only  because  the  nationalist  extremists  of  these  vari- 
ous nationalities,  counting  on  the  known  intention 
■of  the  Allies  to  dismember,  had  frustrated  all  the 
efforts  of  Viennese  statesmanship  to  arrive  at  a 
federal  solution.  But  even  if  it  be  conceded  that 
the  political  disintegration  had  become  in  the  last 
year  of  the  war  inevitable,  that  does  not  acquit  the 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  43 

Allies  of  the  charge  that  they  completed  the  mate- 
rial and  cultural  ruin  of  this  country  by  their  fail- 
ure to  impose  as  a  condition  of  political  independ- 
ence, the  entry  of  all  the  Danubian  States  into  an 
economic  federation.  It  was  a  commonplace 
among  all  students  of  Central  Europe  that  whatever 
were  the  political  shortcomings  of  the  Hapsburg 
Monarchy,  it  conferred  an  inestimable  benefit  on  its 
populations  by  securing  economic  unity.  A  great 
continental  area,  with  very  various  capacities  for 
production  in  its  divers  parts,  enjoyed  a  single  cur- 
rency, an  excellent  transport  system,  and  the  benefit 
of  internal  free-trade.  It  produced  within  its  own 
borders  nearly  everything  necessary  for  a  high  civil- 
ization, but  its  parts  were  mutually  interdependent. 
Here  grain,  there  meat,  here  timber,  there  minerals 
and  elsewhere  manufactures  were  the  staples  of  an 
active  interchange.  This  single  economic  system 
was  shattered  at  the  armistice.  Its  two  ports  of 
Trieste  and  Fiume  were  cut  away.  Six  currencies, 
six  railway  systems,  six  sets  of  tariffs,  six  sets  of 
economic  controls  and  prohibitions  were  at  once  set 
up  to  isolate  these  interdependent  parts  of  a  single 
organism.  Every  one  knows  the  consequences  to 
Vienna.  This  city  of  two  million  souls,  isolated  in 
an  unproductive  Alpine  country,  must  bring  its  corn 
from  America  and  its  coal  from  England,  because 
its  former  sources  of  supply  are  closed.     It  starves, 


44  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

•while  Greater  Serbia  at  its  doors  enjoys  the  rude 
plenty  of  a  superabundant  but  unmarketable  food 
supply.  All  the  currencies  of  these  States  have 
dropped  to  nearly  vanishing  point  on  the  exchange, 
but  not  to  an  equal  degree,  and  the  variations  be- 
tween the  Czech  and  Serbian  crowns,  as  compared 
with  the  Austrian,  would  be  a  barrier  to  trade,  even 
if  it  were  not  necessary  to  overcome  several  pro- 
hibitions, and  to  bribe  several  starving  officials  be- 
fore one  truck  of  goods  can  be  moved  upon  the 
railway.  Tariffs,  which  in  normal  times  would 
hamper  trade,  are  a  trifle  compared  with  the  im- 
perious controls  and  embargoes  which  prohibit,  in 
most  of  these  States,  any  export  whatever.  The 
Czechs  have  even  abolished  the  parcel  post  to  Aus- 
tria. Every  transaction  requires  a  masterstroke  of 
diplomacy,  and  even  when  a  contract  is  made,  usually 
through  the  intervention  of  some  Allied  Commis- 
sion, it  is  rarely  executed.  The  broad  facts  are 
generally  realized  to-day,  but  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  complete  the  enumeration  of  the  endless  de- 
tailed disasters  which  dismemberment  has  caused. 
The  textile  industry,  for  example,  was  usually  so 
subdivided  that  weaving  was  carried  out  in  Austria 
and  spinning  in  Bohemia.  Both  processes  are  now 
arrested.  Again  it  was  the  practice  to  breed  and 
rear  cattle  in  the  highlands  of  Austria,  but  to  fatten 
them  in  plains  which  have  fallen  to  other  States. 
The  economic  chaos  and  its  consequences  in  human 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEU  45 

misery  baffle  analysis  or  descriptiorr.^  Paris  was 
absorbed  in  strategy,  and  knew  nothing  and  cared 
nothing  about  the  human  tragedy,  the  ruin  of  mil- 
lions, which  followed  its  reckless  exercises  in  map- 
drawing. 

THE    BALKANIZATION    OF    EUROPE 

It  would  be  difficult  to  overstate  the  evils  with 
which  this  process  of  Balkanization  threatens  the 
whole  life  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe,  cultural, 
^onomic  and  political.  This  exaggerated  emphasis 
laid  on  national  or  racial  individuality  breeds  a 
temper  of  egoism  and  isolation.  Where  it  prevails, 
there  vanishes  all  concern  for  the  welfare  of  man- 
kind beyond  the  newly-won  frontiers.  The  conse- 
quences are  a  passion  for  economic  self-sufficiency 
which  obstructs  the  normal  processes  of  exchange, 
and  a  chauvinism  in  politics  extravagant  beyond 
anything  in  Western  experience.  The  Poles,  who 
contrived  in  the  first  few  weeks  of  elation  which 
followed  their  liberation  to  get  themselves  involved 
in  warg  with  every  one  of  their  neighbors  —  Ger- 
mans, Czechs,  Ukrainians,  Russians,  and  Lithuan- 
ians—  exhibit  the  vanity  and  quarrelsomeness  of 
this  nationalist  temper  in  its  most  extravagant  form. 
In  the  world  of  science  and  the  arts  the  results  will 

*The  "Economic  Survey"  issued  by  our  Department  of 
Overseas  Trade  (1920),  estimates  (p.  49)  that  the  industries 
of  Austria  are  now  producing  less  than  a  quarter  of  the  pre- 
war output. 


46  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

inevitably  be  a  decline  of  standards  and  a  lapse 
into  provincialism.  Gennan  culture,  whatever  be 
its  besetting  faults,  maintained  a  high  level  of  attain- 
ment and  set  a  broad  continental  standard  of  excel- 
lence throughout  the  Hapsburg  Dominions.  The 
separated  provinces,  each  cultivating  its  o-wn  idiom, 
and  its  own  consciously  emphasized  peculiarities, 
will  miss  the  stimulus  of  a  common  standard  and  a 
common  language. 

The  ethics  and  the  economics  of  the  doctrine  of 
"  self-determination  "  have  not  been  thought  out  to 
their  last  consequences  by  Socialists.  This  doctrine, 
when  recklessly  stated,  is  really  an  inspiration  of 
anarchy  and  individualism.  It  threatens  the  dis- 
solution of  all  the  ties  of  culture  and  common  work 
which  bind  men  of  various  races  together.  It  in- 
volves the  denial,  or  at  least  the  neglect  of  all  the 
impulses  and  all  the  discipline  which  make  for  com- 
mon work  and  co-operation.  It  promotes  the  rend- 
ing and  dissolution  of  a  civilized  life  built  on  cen- 
turies of  common  effort;  it  imperils  all  international 
co-operation.  This  claim  to  stand  apart  in  complete 
isolation  is  a  denial  of  the  social  ties  and  duties 
which  are  broader  than  the  clan-life  of  a  single  race. 

The  danger  is  clear.  None  the  less  the  doctrine 
makes  its  appeal  to  deeply  rooted  sentiments.  Most 
of  the  Socialist  parties  were  before  the  war  in  con- 
flict, more  or  less  strenuous  and  more  or  less  sin- 
cere, with  the  Imperialist  tendencies  of  their  own 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  47 

governments.  If  the  naive  egotigm  of  the  raw  strug- 
gling nationahty  has  its  petty  side,  the  intolerance, 
the  insolence,  the  brutality  of  Imperialist  ruling 
races  was,  and  is,  many  times  more  odious  and 
more  dangerous.  Sympathy,  as  we  watched  these 
conflicts,  led  many  of  us  into  a  sentimental  enthus- 
iasm for  "  little  nationalities,"  as  though  their  small- 
ness  were  a  positive  advantage.  Englishmen  are 
much  given  to  this  phase  of  enthusiasm,  though  we 
have  taken  great  pains  to  avoid  being  ourselves  a 
little  nationality.  It  is  a  clear  deduction  from  any 
honest  statement  of  democratic  principles,  that  any 
people  which  feels  itself  to  be  a  nationality  shall 
enjoy  the  right  to  decide  freely  under  what  sov- 
ereignty it  shall  live.  The  Allies,  by  their  flagrantly 
partial  and  dishonest  application  of  this  principle, 
have  not  in  fact  discredited  it.  On  the  contrary, 
they  have  given  it,  in  Ireland  especially  and  in 
Egypt,  an  energy  which  it  lacked  before  the  war. 
It  would  be  far  easier  and  more  natural  to  apply 
it  to  Ireland  and  to  Egypt  than  to  these  land-locked 
countries  of  Central  Europe,  with  their  desperately 
intermingled  populations.  As  democrats  and  as 
honest  men,  we  cannot  refuse  to  apply  it,  where,  as 
in  Ireland,  the  demand  is  passionate,  long-lived,  and 
all  but  unanimous.  The  evils  of  the  brutal  use  of 
force,  both  to  the  ruling  and  to  the  subject  race,  are 
infinitely  greater  than  the  losses  which  nationalist 
separation    ma}^    bring    with    them.     A    Socialist 


48  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

should  say  to  Ireland,  "  By  all  means,  since  you 
insist  on  it,  you  shall  exercise  your  right  without 
reservations.  Decide  by  constituent  assembly  or  by 
plebiscite,  in  full  liberty,  what  it  is  you  prefer, 
republican  independence  or  Dominion  Home  Rule. 
H  you  choose  independence,  we  shall  make  no  diffi- 
culties." But  having  said  this,  he  may  go  on  to 
state,  as  forcibly  as  he  can,  the  arguments  against 
absolute  nationalism — ^the  economic  risks,  the  cul- 
tural losses,  the  danger  of  militarism,  the  illusory 
nature  of  political  independence  for  any  small  peo- 
ple in  this  dangerous  world.  He  may  urge  that,  in 
spite  of  gross  errors  in  the  past  and  a  disastrous 
historic  legacy,  two  peoples  who  decide  to  live  to- 
gether with  some  common  ties  may,  while  conced- 
ing to  each  other  self-government  in  many  things, 
lead  a  richer  and  fuller  life,  because  in  other  mat- 
ters they  co-operate. 

To  a  Socialist,  the  absorbing  problem  of  to-day 
and  to-morrow  is  the  economic  reconstruction  of  our 
civilization.  How  best  to  eliminate  the  despotic 
power  over  other  men's  lives  which  privately-owned 
capital  gives  to  a  small  possessing  class;  how  best 
to  organize  the  self-government  of  the  workers  in 
industry,  so  that  the  conditions  of  their  daily  tasks 
shall  evoke  in  them  the  spirit  of  social  service  and 
the  joy  of  work  —  if  these  are  our  problems,  racial 
and  national  claims  cut  across  them  as  irrelevancies. 
Everywhere  the  industrial  system  creates  the  same 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  49 

conditions.  It  talks  no  national  dialect.  Yet  quar- 
rels based  on  language,  or  on  obsolete  historic  mem- 
ories, threaten  the  unity  of  the  working  class  and 
distract  its  mind,  wherever  national  issues  obtrude. 
Nationalism  becomes  the  devouring  master  passion, 
and  shatters  every  attempt  to  range  men  of  two 
races  in  one  proletarian  organization.  In  Czecho- 
slovakia, for  example,  the  Czech  Socialists  combine 
in  their  Parliament  not  with  the  German  Socialists, 
but  with  the  Czech  Agrarians,  while  the  German 
Socialists  form  a  solid  block  with  the  middle-class 
parties  of  their  own  race.  In  Poland,  the  intense 
intolerance  of  Polish  nationalism  actually  obliges  the 
Jewish  workmen  to  organize  in  separate  racial  Trade 
Unions.  No  Socialist  will  deny  the  intellectual, 
moral  and  aesthetic  value  of  any  rich  and  distinct 
national  life.  No  Socialist  party  has  ever  wished 
or  tried  to  obliterate  or  repress  the  traditions  which 
cling  to  the  history,  the  literature,  the  language  or 
the  religion  of  a  nationality.  On  the  contrary,  every 
Socialist  party  worthy  of  the  name  has  battled  for 
tolerance  and  generosity  in  these  vital,  emotional 
things.  We  do  not  want  a  drab  and  uniform  world, 
though  of  its  many  colors  we  would  make  a  har- 
mony. But  it  is  not  clear  to  us  that  much  is  gained 
by  insisting  on  associating  political  authority  with 
racial  distinctions.  That  is  only  to  confuse  and  ob- 
struct the  more  pressing  economic  problems.  It 
is  always  possible  to  concede  to  every  race  in  a  united 


50  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

territory  the  utmost  liberty  and  autonomy  in  schools, 
churches,  clubs  and  associations  for  its  cultural  life. 
It  is  always  possible  to  link  up  areas,  whose  popu- 
lations desire  local  self-government,  in  a  federal 
union.  Passion  and  the  legacy  of  history  may  make 
complete  separation  a  necessity.  We  ought  never 
to  refuse  even  that,  where  a  people  insists  upon  it 
in  cold  blood,  but  it  is  no  part  of  our  doctrine  to 
promote  or  applaud  such  solutions,  whether  at  home 
or  abroad. 

If  it  had  been  possible  to  create  a  League  of 
Nations,  so  closely  knit,  especially  on  its  economic 
side,  as  to  be  in  effect  a  federal  system,  this  multipli- 
cation of  little  States  might  not  have  been  a  serious 
evil.  Each  of  them  would  have  lived  its  life  as  a 
unit  in  a  greater  whole,  united  for  mutual  protection 
and  interchange.  The  League,  however,  as  we 
know  it  to-day,  is  the  faded  ghost  of  a  great  hope, 
impotent  to  modify  even  in  the  smallest  particular 
the  enraged  egoism  of  these  vehemently  separate 
States.  The  Baltic,  Caucasian  and  Danubian  States 
have  lost  their  share  in  the  wider  life  of  ideas  and 
economics  in  the  Russian  and  Hapsburg  Empires, 
without  gaining  anything  from  this  feeble  fore- 
shadowing of  a  world-wide  union.  In  point  of  fact, 
it  is  not  nationality,  but  rather  Imperialism  which 
has  gained  by  this  change.  As  units  in  a  federal 
Republic,  these  little  States  would  have  had  a  real 
share  in  the  determination  of  its  common  affairs. 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  '51 

As  it  is,  they  must  each  submit,  with  no  Court  of 
Appeal,  to  the  dictation,  miHtary,  poHtical  and  eco- 
nomic, of  the  greater  Allies.  Their  independence 
is  only  nominal.  Alike  in  their  commercial  and  in 
their  political  life,  they  must  obey  the  lightest  sug- 
gestion of  the  Powers  which  possess  the  force  or 
the  wealth  to  control  their  destinies.  For  this  sub- 
servience there  is  no  remedy  in  the  present  state 
of  the  world.  If  we  were  to  learn  that  Esthonia 
or  Georgia  had  demanded  that  a  matter  in  dispute 
with  the  British  Empire  should  be  submitted  to  arbi- 
tration, the  official  world  would  gasp  at  such  audac- 
ity, and  if  Downing  Street  agreed  to  arbitration 
in  such  a  case  by  a  neutral  court,  some  would  ask 
if  we  had  really  won  the  war.  These  little  States, 
whose  chief  possession  is  a  strip  of  coast,  have  be- 
come items  in  British  naval  policy,  useful  when  we 
please  to  trade,  indispensable  when  we  prefer  to 
blockade.  The  minor  continental  States  dovetail  as 
naturally  into  the  military  policy  of  France.  They 
have  no  free  share  in  determining  the  policy  of  any 
unit  larger  than  themselves.  They  have  less  real 
power  of  influencing  their  environment  than  they 
would  have  had  as  members,  with  voice  and  vote, 
of  federal  Austrian  and  Russian  Republics.  The 
Balkanization  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe  has 
meant  not  the  reality  of  national  independence  for 
these  peoples,  but  their  subjection  to  Western  Im- 
perialism. 


52  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

This  phenomenon  of  Balkanization  seems  at  first 
sight  to  mean  that  nationahty  has  asserted  itself  as 
a  positive  and  shaping  force.  On  a  closer  view 
one  inclines  to  regard  it  rather  as  a  sign  of  dissolu- 
tion. The  war  has  shaken  the  fabric  of  civilization 
on  the  Continent.  The  big  structures  have  broken 
down.  The  elaborate  organisms  have  split  into 
their  component  parts.  It  is  a  symptom  not  of  vivid 
and  superabundant  life,  but  of  decay,  retrogression, 
decline.  The  high  complex  organism  has  broken  up 
into  its  elementary  cells.  Nationalist  passion  has 
helped  the  change.  It  has  rent  the  big  organism 
violently  asunder,  where  elsewhere  one  notes  a  mere 
nerveless  falling  apart.  But  the  same  phenomenon 
appears,  even  v^here  there  is  no  racial  question.  The 
tiny  fragment  which  we  call  German  Austria, 
though  it  is  racially  uniform,  is  only  held  together 
by  the  veto  of  the  Allies  on  further  dissolution. 
One  portion,  Vorarlberg,  has  voted  for  union  with 
Switzerland,  another,  the  Tyrol,  for  annexation  to 
Bavaria.  The  tendency  is  now  to  frame  a  federal 
constitution  for  German  Austria,  which  leaves  only 
a  shadowy  authority  to  the  Central  State.  And  yet 
the  total  population  of  this  little  State  is  only  six 
millions.  Each  Austrian  province,  even  each  par- 
ish, attempts  in  economic  matters,  especially  by  for- 
bidding the  export  of  food,  to  exert  sovereign  au- 
thority. The  country  defies  the  town;  the  town 
would  defy  the  country,  were  it  not  that  it  dreads 


THE  POLITICS  OF  BABEL  53 

starvation.  The  same  particularism  on  a  much 
larger  scale  shows  itself  in  Germany.  The  Catholic 
South  dreads  the  more  revolutionary  North,  and  the 
Junker  East  regards  ''  red  "  Berlin  as  worse  than 
a  foreign  city.  In  prosperity  great  States  hold  to- 
gether, and  a  pulsing  life  of  economic  and  intellec- 
tual exchange  can  -maintain  the  most  diverse  regions 
in  unity.  Adversity  brings  dissolution.  When 
trade  stagnates,  when  thought  is  busied  only  with 
the  intolerable  misery,  when  the  daily  bread  is  al- 
ways measured  and  sometimes  missed,  the  circle  of 
men's  interests  and  sympathies  contracts.  Each 
province,  each  town,  even  each  village,  thinks  only 
of  itself,  and  resents  so  bitterly  the  thought  of  part- 
ing with  anything  it  possesses,  that  it  will  hardly 
exchange  even  its  superfluities.  It  closes  its  gates, 
and  the  parish  boiundary  becomes  a  veritable  fron- 
tier. An  elementary  instinct  of  self-preservation 
expresses  itself  as  a  parochial  selfishness.  The  clan, 
the  parish,  the  race  assert  themselves  against  the 
wider  national  and  international  life.  So  far  from 
rejoicing  at  the  riot  01  nationalism  and  particu- 
larism in  Europe,  as  though  it  were  a  movement  of 
vigorous  life  towards  liberty,  we  ought  rather  to 
see  in  it  the  unmistakable  symptom  of  decay.  The 
politics  of  the  Tower  of  Babel  means  a  return  to  a 
poverty-stricken  and  elementary  existence,  a  weak- 
ening of  constructive  and  creative  power,  a  decline 
in  civilization. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER     • 

The  war  left  in  Europe  only  three  Great  Powers 
which  retained  the  ability  to  act  independently  be- 
yond their  frontiers :  of  the  three,  only  Great  Brit- 
ain combines  a  relatively  sound  economic  structure 
with  adequate  military  and  naval  force.  The  Peace 
Treaties  made  a  European  system  which  could  be 
controlled,  if  at  all,  only  by  a  great  military  Alli- 
ance, vigilant,  permanent,  united  and  indefatigible. 
In  the  world  made  by  these  Treaties  a  League  of  Na- 
tions can  have  no  moral  reality  and  only  the  most 
modest  of  functions.  The  need  for  force  in  the 
relationship  of  peoples  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  their 
contentment.  Where  there  are  unsatisfied  ambi- 
tions, there  will  be  armaments.  When  half  a  con- 
tinent feels  that  the  terms  dictated  to  it  are  not 
merely  an  offense  to  its  self-respect,  but  are  barely 
compatible  with  its  physical  survival,  it  is  plain  that 
the  settlement  can  in  the  long  run  be  enforced  only 
by  maintaining  in  the  hands  of  the  victors  an  irre- 
sistible police.  A  League  of  Nations  worthy  of  the 
name  could  have  been  created  only  as  the  frame- 

54 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER       55 

work  and  expression  of  a  settlement  which  had  won 
the  general  assent  of  civilization.  Contentment  in 
the  literal  sense  may  be  an  unattainable  ideal.  Any 
settlement  which  assured  the  future  must  have  im- 
posed sacrifices  on  the  vanquished.  Some  territo- 
rial rearrang€;ments  were  necessary  and  right. 
Poland  had  to  be  reconstituted.  Alsace  could  not 
have  been  left,  against  its  desire,  within  the  German 
Empire,  .though  a  plebiscite  ought  to  have  been  ac- 
corded. Hungary,  though  the  actual  dismember- 
ment is  excessive,  could  not  have  been  left  to  tyran- 
nize over  a  subject  population  as  numerous  as  her 
own.  Disarmament  was  indispensable,  though  it 
ought  not  to  have  been  one-sided.  A  contribution 
from  Germany  to  repair  the  devastation  in  France 
was  required  by  equity  and  humanity.  None  of 
these  things  would  have  been  a  barrier  to  a  lasting 
settlement,  and  even  in  Germany  a  great  part,  per- 
haps a  majority  of  the  population,  would  have  ad- 
mitted their  justice.  These  Treaties,  however,  are 
so  packed  with  flagrant  injustice,  so  plainly  dic- 
tated by  strategical  ambition  and  economic  greed, 
that  they  can  evoke  no  moral  assent.  More  fatal 
by  far  than  their  remoteness  from  the  moral  stand- 
ards professed  by  the  victors  is  their  disastrous  eco- 
nomic effect.  Half  a  Continent  has  been  deprived 
of  hope,  resources,  ambition  and  the  possibility  of 
work,  and  confronted  with  the  prospect  that  it  will 
either  fail  to  maintain  its  population  on  a  civilized 


56  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

level  of  comfort,  or  else  acquiesce  for  a  generation 
in  devoting  all  the  energy  that  can  be  spared  from 
the  struggle  to  win  its  daily  bread,  to  the  task  of 
pouring  wealth  into  the  coffers  of  its  conquerors. 
Treaties  which  make  an  oppression  that  is  felt  in 
every  home,  at  every  family  meal,  in  every  school, 
which  reduce  millions  of  men  to  helpless  penury  and 
degradation,  can  be  maintained,  if  at  all,  only  by 
overwhelming  force.  It  is  idle,  while  the  Treaties 
are  maintained,  to  talk  of  substituting  the  League 
of  Nations  for  the  alliance  of  the  victors.  No 
League  in  which  neutrals  and  the  vanquished  were 
fairly  represented  could  or  would  consent  to  en- 
force these  Treaties.  The  only  power  which  can 
or  will  enforce  them  is  an  irresistible  military  al- 
liance of  governments  which  believe  that  they  have 
an  interest  in  maintaining  them.  While  this  alli- 
ance dominates  the  world,  the  League  can  be  only  its 
shadow,  its  tool,  its  creature,  whose  action  will  be 
tolerated  only  in  directions  and  within  limits,  which 
leave  the  governing  authority  of  the  Alliance  unim- 
paired. The  liberal  idealism  which  found  its  com- 
pensation for  the  misery  and  cruelty  of  the  war  in 
the  creation  of  a  league  of  peace  was  misled  at 
Versailles  into  a  fatal  and  irremediable  error  of  tac- 
tics. Mr.  Wilson,  Lord  Robert  Cecil  and  General 
Smuts  seem  to  have  believed  that  if  they  could  but 
create  the  League,  the  iniquities  of  the  Treaties  could 
be  gradually  reformed  away.     The  history  of  Ver- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      57 

sailles  is  that  of  a  compromise,  in  which  one  party 
purchased  the  empty  success  of  creating  a  pacific 
League,  while  the  other  party  made  a  world  which 
can  be  governed,  if  at  all,  only  by  brute  force.  The 
Liberals  were  doomed  to  defeat  from  the  first  day. 
A  dictated  settlement  can  inaugurate  nothing  but  an 
era  of  international  coercion. 

If  the  Allies  do  eventually  admit  our  late  enemies 
to  the  League,  they  must  safeguard  their  settlement 
by  denying  to  the  League  any  real  power  to  modify 
it.  By  what  expedients  they  achieve  this  result  is 
a  question  only  of  tactics.  Some  of  the  expedients 
are  apparent  in  the  Covenant  of  the  League  itself. 
Its  Council  can  do  nothing  unless  it  is  unanimous, 
nor  can  the  Assembly  do  much  without  the  assent 
of  the  Council.  That  in  itself  is  enough  to  perpet- 
uate the  settlement  of  Versailles.  We  have  a  World 
Parliament,  but  it  meets  under  a  handicap  compar- 
able only  to  the  fantastic  liberum  veto  of  the  crazy 
Polish  Monarchy.  If  any  one  of  the  victors  can 
block  any  proposal  for  amendment,  it  is  a  mockery 
to  create  a  Council. 

BRITISH  SEA-POWER 

A  glance  at  the  real  balance  of  power  in  the 
world  suffices  to  demonstrate  the  impotence  of  the 
League,  if  we  regard  it  as  an  independent  body, 
which  ought  to  be  free  on  occasion  to  take  and 
enforce  some  decision  which  might  be  unwelcome  to 


58  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

one  or  more  of  the  chief  AlHes.  It  is  hard  to  see 
how  either  the  Council  or  the  Assembly  could  con- 
ceivably reach  such  a  decision,  as  they  are  consti- 
tuted to-day.  If  they  were  to  reach  it,  they  could 
not  enforce  it.  One-sided  disarmament  has  left  the 
chief  Allies  omnipotent.  We  resisted  the  Ameri- 
can doctrine  of  the  "  freedom  of  the  seas,"  for  the 
avowed  reason  that  our  right  to  the  utmost  use  of 
the  weapon  of  the  blockade  must  remain  unim- 
paired. Our  hands  are  free,  in  any  dispute  of  our 
own,  which  the  League  had  failed  to  adjust,  to  make 
the  maximum  use  of  this  terrific  weapon.  We  could 
use  it  now  with  vastly  greater  effect  than  during 
the  war,  for  the  navy  of  our  late  enemies  has  ceased 
to  exist.  We  are,  moreover,  established  now  within 
the  Baltic.  The  only  legal  check,  which  exists  to  an 
unlimited  British  blockade,  is  that  the  Turkish 
Treaty  provides  against  the  closing  of  the  Bosphorus 
and  Dardanelles,  save  by  a  decision  of  the  League 
of  Nations.  Even  this  provision,  however,  is  worth 
very  little,  for  the  police  of  the  Straits  is  confided 
to  the  Allies,  and  not  to  the  League.  In  actual 
fact,  the  Turkish  Straits  are  almost  as  completely 
under  British  control  as  the  Suez  Canal  itself.  The 
failure  of  America  to  impose  any  check  whatever 
upon  our  naval  power  must  count  among  the  two 
or  three  decisive  and  permanent  results  of  the  Peace 
Conference. 
The  whole  Continent  now  lives  under  the  shadow 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER       59 

of  our  sea-power,  and  must  reckon  with  it,  as  men 
reckon  with  the  seasons,  as  one  of  the  unalterable 
conditions  of  their  political  and  economic  life.  The 
memory  of  what  our  blockade  achieved  will  last, 
while  any  of  the  children  are  alive  who  saw  the 
war.  It  has  left  its  mark  more  permanently  than 
any  local  devastation.  The  hand  of  man  will  in  a 
few  years  cover  up  the  vandal  work  which  Luden- 
dorff  wrought  in  the  Northern  Departments  of 
France,  but  for  half  a  century  to  come,  the  stunted, 
rickety  and  tuberculous  children  of  the  blockade 
years  will  carry  in  their  bodies  a  reminder  of  our 
power.  Henceforward  the  lightest  threat  to  block- 
ade will  suffice  to  impose  our  will  on  the  Continent, 
and  whole  populations  must  reckon  with  it  in  all  they 
plan. 

Naval  power,  acting  through  the  blockade,  is 
perhaps  a  worse  menace  to  the  freedom  of  weaker 
states  than  military  power.  It  can  be  used  with 
relative  impunity  by  the  stronger.  A  certain  sen- 
timent against  risking  the  lives  of  our  own  soldiers 
will  always  be  a  restraint,  though  a  weak  one, 
against  land  wars.  But  a  blockade  costs  little  or 
nothing  in  life  to  ourselves.  So  strangely  partial 
is  our  thinking,  that  many  kindly  people  even  re- 
gard it  as  a  relatively  humane  form  of  coercion  or 
self-assertion.  It  is  bloodless,  and  there  are  those 
who  would  think  it  a  crime  to  cause  a  few  hundred 
deaths   by   shooting,   but   lack  the   imagination  to 


6o  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

realize  the  suffering  under  starvation,  typhus,  rickets 
and  tuberculosis  of  the  millions  of  a  blockaded  pop- 
ulation. The  blockade  is  for  a  naval  Empire  a 
cheap  method  of  wielding  power.  It  costs  us  little 
in  blood  or  money.  That  means  that  Governments 
may  make  use  of  it,  lightly,  even  recklessly,  with 
little  check  either  from  humane  opinion  or  from 
the  taxpayer's  prudence.  The  blockade  is  a  subtle 
instrument,  which  has  solved  Shylock's  problem  of 
taking  the  pound  of  flesh  without  shedding  Chris- 
tian blood.  Nor  does  it  touch  the  Christian  con- 
science. We  are  like  those  bishops  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  who  would  ride  into  battle  armed  with  mace 
but  not  with  sword.  Bloodshed  is  abhorrent,  and 
given  the  ships,  it  is  also  unnecessary. 

FRENCH  MILITARY  POLICY 

On  land  the  corresponding  fact  is  the  military 
ascendancy  of  France.  She  alone  combines  im- 
mense military  power  with  a  relative  economic  self- 
sufficiency.  Italy,  with  a  much  smaller  and  less  effi- 
cient army,  is  lamed  for  independent  action  by  her 
dependence  on  imported  coal  and  grain.  She  can- 
not act  without  Allies  who  will  supply  her  with  these 
essentials.  Few  of  us  realize  that  the  relative  mili- 
tary power  of  France  is  now  vastly  greater  than 
that  of  Germany  ever  was.  She  has  disarmed  her 
chief  antagonist,  forbidden  to  him  the  manufacture 
of  heavy  artillery,  fighting  air-craft  or  tanks,  occu- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      6i 

pied  his  western  provinces  and  dismantled  his  fort- 
resses. He  is  helpless  not  merely  for  aggression 
but  even  for  defense.  This  disparity  will  be  per- 
manent, for  to  the  late  enemies  of  France,  and  to 
them  alone,  the  instrument  of  a  national  army  is 
denied.  She  retains,  however,  conscription,  and  so 
also  do  the  satellites  who  move  in  her  orbit  — 
Poland,  Czecho-Slovakia,  Roumania,  and  Jugo- 
slavia. France  has  recovered  the  military  predom- 
inance which  she  enjoyed  under  the  first  Napoleon, 
and  in  broad  outline  the  strategical  politics  of  Mar- 
shal Foch  revive  Napoleonic  tradition.  The  Polish 
army  is  trained  and  organized  by  a  French  "  mis- 
sion," which  is  said  to  number  600  officers.  War- 
saw is  once  more  "  an  outpost  of  France  vipon  the 
Vistula." 

M.  Clemenceau  did  not  realize  the  full  ambition 
of  M.  Poincare,  recorded  in  the  Secret  Treaty  with 
Russia,  for  the  recognition  of  the  Rhine  as  the 
"  natural  frontier "  of  France.  He  did,  however, 
secure  for  fifteen  years  the  possession  of  the  Saar 
Valley,  and  the  permanent  ownership  of  its  coal- 
mines. He  also  secured  the  military  occupation 
for  the  same  period  of  the  Southern  Rhine  pro- 
vinces, and  M.  Millerand  has  officially  declared  that 
any  infraction  of  the  Treaty  (and  its  literal  fulfil- 
ment is  impossible)  will  entitle  France  to  prolong 
the  occupation  even  beyond  these  fifteen  years. 
With  these  securities  the  predominant  military  and 


^2  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

political  opinion  in  France  is  not  yet  satisfied.  By 
agitation  in  Paris,  and  by  intrigue  in  the  cities  of 
the  Rhine,  France  is  openly  working  for  the  perma- 
nent dismemberment  of  Germany,  and  it  is  the  re- 
solve of  her  politicians  and  soldiers  in  some  way  to 
prevent  the  restoration  of  the  Rhine  provinces  to 
the  Fatherland.  In  the  Note  sent  from  San  Remo, 
the  Supreme  Council  threatened  the  occupation  of 
further  districts  of  Germany  should  any  part  of  the 
Treaty  remain  unfulfilled.  The  plan  seems  to  be : 
first,  to  occupy  the  coal-field  of  the  Ruhr,  the 
densely-peopled  "  black  country  "  round  Essen,  and 
then  to  use  it  as  a  lure  with  which  to  carry  the 
dismemberment  of  Germany  still  further.  The 
whole  economic  life  of  Germany  depends  on  the 
two  great  coal-fields  of  the  Ruhr  and  Silesia,  and 
both  of  them  may  be  cut  off.  The  result  would  be 
the  total  industrial  ruin  of  what  remained.  It 
would  then  be  easy  to  play  on  the  separatist  tenden- 
cies which  exist  in  Bavaria  and  the  south.  "  Re- 
main in  the  German  Reich  "  (so  the  argument  would 
run),  "  and  you  will  starve,  linked  to  the  corpse  of 
Prussia.  Break  away,  declare  your  independence, 
place  yourself  under  the  protection  of  France,  and 
you  shall  be  amply  provisioned  with  Ruhr  coal." 
The  sentiment  of  national  and  racial  solidarity 
among  the  Germans  is  probably  stronger  than  the 
French  suppose.  This  policy,  none  the  less,  might 
succeed  for  a  time,  and  result  in  a  temporary  sepa- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      63 

ration  of  the  Rhine  provinces  and  the  south  from 
Prussia.  The  prevalent  view  in  our  own  country 
is  still  that  Prussia  is  the  home  of  reaction,  while 
Bavaria  is  more  "  liberal."  That  is  wholly  untrue. 
Prussia  is  the  more  thoroughly  industrialized  half  of 
Germany.  The  Ruhr,  Berlin  and  the  Saxon  black 
country  are  the  strongholds  of  Socialism,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  Independents.  The  class  struggle  is 
sharper  than  elsewhere,  but  if  we  exclude  the  re- 
mote agricultural  north  and  north-east,  where  the 
Junker  squirearchy  is  still  supreme,  Prussia,  since 
the  fall  of  the  Hohenzollerns,  belongs  predomi- 
nantly to  the  advanced  parties.  Not  so  Bavaria. 
Outside  its  large  towns,  the  countryside  is  clerical. 
It  is  well  armed,  and  its  governing  passion  is  a 
dread,  not  of  the  Prussian  reaction,  but  of  the  Prus- 
sian revolution.  French  diplomacy  has  always  been 
skilful  in  its  dealings  with  clericalism.  If  Bavaria 
should  break  away,  Austria,  in  spite  of  its  strong 
Socialist  party,  will  probably  be  allowed  and  en- 
couraged by  the  French  to  unite  with  it,  and  it  is 
even  possible  that  Monarchy  may  be  restored.  This 
South  German  State  would  live  by  a  measure  of 
French  patronage,  much  as  its  ancestors  did  under 
Napoleon. 

BRITISH    AND    FRENCH    ARMS 

It   is    for  us   a   standing   puzzle  to   guess   what 
French  policy  on  the  Continent  really  is.     We  re- 


641  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

peat  to  ourselves  that  our  Allies  are  a  logical  people, 
and  yet  they  appear  to  follow  incompatible  aims. 
They  seem  at  times  to  desire  the  total  ruin  of  Ger- 
many, both  in  the  industrial  and  in  the  military 
sense,  and,  indeed,  in  the  modern  world,  these  two 
aspects  of  power  can  hardly  be  separated.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  seem  to  believe  that  from  this 
ruined  land  they  can  extort  a  fabulous  indemnity. 
They  hunt  for  that  indemnity  among  the  ruins,  as 
some  one  has  said,  much  as  mediaeval  alchemists 
hunted  for  the  philosopher's  stone.  Their  finance 
is  built  on  that  expectation,  and  if  it  is  not  fulfilled, 
they,  too,  must  face  ruin.  To  some  extent  they 
may  be  the  victims  of  mental  confusion,  and  of  in- 
compatible ambitions,  among  which  they  will  not 
select  what  is  realizable.  There  are,  however,  other 
possible  explanations.  If  they  can  anticipate  the 
indemnity  by  the  proceeds  of  an  International  Loan, 
guaranteed  mainly  by  Great  Britain,  they  can  afford 
to  be  indifferent  to  the  question  whether  Germany 
can  or  will  pay,  for  the  loss  by  her  default  would 
fall  in  that  case  primarily  on  us.  Again,  if  Ger- 
man unity  were  once  broken,  the  French  might  con- 
sent to  revise  th.eir  policy.  They  would  allow  the 
Catholic  west  and  south  to  recover,  and  recoup 
themselves  by  exploiting  it  discreetly  and  not  too 
harshly.  Prussia,  indeed,  would  be  ruined,  but  she 
would  sink  to  the  position  of  a  third-rate  agricul- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      65 

tural  State,  and  her  resentment  might  be  ignored  as 
a  practical  danger, 

Our  own  peculiar  brand  of  Imperialism  is  written 
all  over  these  Treaties.  We  have  made  ourselves 
all-powerful  at  sea.  We  have  confiscated  the  mer- 
cantile marine  of  Germany.  We  have  suppressed, 
or  taken  power  to  suppress,  all  the  branches  of  her 
industrial  and  commercial  enterprises  and  businesses 
which  competed  with  our  own  outside  her  borders. 
No  part  of  our  policy  during  or  after  the  war  was 
pursued  with  such  thoroughness.  Everywhere 
within  the  Allied  world  German  businesses,  banks 
and  agencies  were  closed  down  and  liquidated,  so 
that  when  at  length  peace  did  bring  the  theoretical 
possibility  of  trading,  Germany  had  to  start  again 
from  the  beginning,  without  connections  or  open- 
ings. The  same  course  was  followed  also  in  Africa, 
where  all  the  wharves,  warehouses  and  transport 
material  of  enemy  firms  were  sold  by  auction  to 
their  competitors.  Towards  the  end  of  the  war, 
certain  of  the  remoter  neutral  States,  like  China 
and  Brazil,  were  brought  into  our  camp  as  Allies, 
though  it  was  never  suggested  that  they  should  con- 
tribute a  ship  or  a  battalion  to  our  fighting  forces. 
One  of  the  prime  objects  of  this  curious  maneuver 
was  that  in  these  States,  also,  the  process  of  uproot- 
ing German  commerce  could  be  completed  by 
methods  possible  only  in  a  state  of  war.     Here  also 


66  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

German  businesses  were  liquidated,  and  from 
Cliina  the  numerous  colony  of  German  residents 
was  expelled.  The  Peace  Treaties  put  the  coping- 
stone  on  all  this  preparatory  work.  They  con- 
tained none  of  the  clauses  establishing  legal  and 
commercial  reciprocity  usual  in  all  the  Treaties 
which  have  terminated  former  wars.  They  secured 
for  Allied  trade  and  traders  in  Germany  every  con- 
ceivable right  and  privilege  to  reside,  to  acquire 
property,  to  use  rivers  and  railways  at  the  lowest 
rates,  to  fly  into  or  over  the  country,  and  to  enjoy 
the  status  of  the  "  most  favored  nation  "  In  all  tariff 
regulations.  Not  a  word  suggested  that  any  of 
these  rights  were  to  be  mutual.  The  state  of  peace 
has  not  automatically  brought  back  to  the  German 
traders  any  of  the  usual  rights  enjoyed  In  foreign 
countries  by  the  subjects  of  every  civilized  state. 
In  China,  the  usual  Customs  tariff  applicable  to  the 
goods  of  all  European  States  alike  has  been  denied 
to  them.  Nor  Is  this  all.  It  remained  to  acquire 
their  enterprises  and  concessions,  railways,  oil-wells 
and  the  like,  in  Turkey,  Russia  and  China.  That  is 
provided  for  in  the  Treaty  (Article  260).  Finally, 
as  an  Item  in  the  indemnity,  their  businesses,  even  In 
neutral  countries,  may  be  liquidated  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Allies  (Article  235).  All  this  was  rather  a 
British  than  a  French  policy.  It  solved  the  prob- 
lem for  a  modern  capitj,list  Power,  of  making  war 
a  profitable  enterprise,  at  all  events  for  the  possess- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      67 

ing  classes.  A  measurable  number  of  millions,  the 
greater  part  of  the  profits  of  German  overseas  trade, 
has  by  these  various  expedients  been  added  to  the 
national  income  of  the  British  Empire.  Our  chief 
competitor  in  world-trade  has  vanished  as  a  com- 
petitor from  every  port  and  from  every  market  in 
China,  South  America,  Africa  and  Turkey.  Apart 
from  our  acquisition  of  her  African  colonies  and  of 
Mesopotamia,  with  its  oil,  our  gain  from  conquest 
is  mainly  indirect.  We  reckon  on  adding  the  profits 
of  this  once  thriving  German  world-trade  to  our 
own,  and  should  Germany  again  begin  to  work  and 
export,  a  substantial  portion  of  the  profits  of  this 
new  trade  will,  infallibly,  go  to  us  as  shippers, 
bankers  and  middlemen.  This  is  a  form  of  indem- 
nity which  may  be  more  profitable  to  ourselves  and 
more  crippling  to  the  enemy  than  the  money  tribute 
which  the  French  desire.  But  it  implies  a  certain 
degree  of  energy,  enterprise  and  commercial  expe- 
rience in  the  Power  which  profits  by  it.  Our  men- 
tality is  that  of  the  merchant  and  the  manufacturer. 
We  prize,  especially,  the  opportunities  for  future 
trading  gains.  We  are  trying,  for  example,  to  ac- 
quire as  part  of  our  share  in  the  indemnity,  the  large 
and  admirably  managed  businesses  of  the  German 
Electrical  Companies  in  South  America.  Whereas  we 
take  a  business  and  mean  to  run  it,  the  French  de- 
sire a  tribute  in  hard  cash.  That  is  the  mentality 
of  the  rentier,  the  man  who  lives  on  the  interest  of 


68  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

capital,  whether  it  be  his  savings,  his  inheritance, 
or  the  fruits  of  victory.  France  has  never  been  a 
country  of  great  businesses  working  for  a  world- 
market.  Her  most  valuable  exports  are  articles  of 
luxury,  into  which  taste  and  skill  enter  as  the  chief 
ingredients.  Hers  is  a  society  based  on  small  busi- 
nesses, small  farms,  small  properties,  to  be  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation  with  small  in- 
crements to  small  families.  We  visualize  wealth  as 
the  possession  of  a  big  and  expanding  business. 
The  French  visualize  it  rather  as  the  possession  of 
share  certificates  and  title-deeds,  which  bring  in  their 
punctual  interest.  The  two  national  characters  are 
built  upon  this  broad  economic  difference.  Our 
temperament  is  the  more  adventurous.  Theirs 
seems  to  us  somewhat  narrow  and  grasping.  We 
seem  fated  to  misunderstand  each  other,  whenever 
we  face  an  economic  problem  together.  Take,  for 
example,  the  attitude  of  the  two  business  worlds  to- 
wards Soviet  Russia.  Ours,  on  the  whole,  would 
cut  its  losses  and  start  trading  again.  The  French 
see  no  "  opening,"  and  cannot  look  beyond  the  fact 
that  Moscow  has  a  store  of  gold,  which  might  be 
captured  and  used  to  pay  some  of  the  interest  on 
the  repudiated  debt.  Our  attitude,  given  our 
energy,  is  the  more  reasonable  and  far-sighted,  but 
in  its  way  it  is  not  less  acquisitive  than  the  "  grasp- 
ing "  policy  of  capitalist  France.  Englishmen  and 
Frenchmen  look  at  each  other  and  turn  away  dis- 


■  THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER       69 

pleased.     What  each  sees  mirrored  in  the  other  face 
is  the  soul  of  an  acquisitive  capitalist  society. 

These  two  divergent  policies  are  at  the  root  of 
the  fatal  dualism  of  Allied  policy  towards  Ger- 
many. We  were  not  a  whit  more  humane  or  gen- 
erous towards  the  beaten  foe.  Indeed,  we  com- 
pleted his  commercial  ruin  with  masterly  thorough- 
ness. When  once  we  have  destroyed  his  power  of 
earning  and  trading,  however,  we  have  the  sense 
to  realize,  for  the  most  part,  that  he  cannot  pay  also 
a  huge  indemnity,  measured  in  thousands  of  millions 
sterling.  We  can  afford  to  be  "  philosophical " 
about  it.  We  have  got  our  indirect  gain  by  destroy- 
ing his  competition.  That,  however,  is  small  con- 
solation to'  the  French.  Their  industry,  their  na- 
tional character  and  economy  are  not  so  built  that 
they  can  profit  by  this  occasion.  It  is  we,  not  they, 
who  will  step  into  German  shoes  in  the  Chinese,  Afri- 
can and  South  American  markets.  Accordingly, 
the  French  must  needs  demand  the  cash  indemnity 
also.  That  annoys  us.  We  know  it  is  unobtain- 
able. We  have  stripped  the  enemy  so  bare  that  he 
cannot  now  earn  an  indemnity  for  the  French.  In 
private  conversation,  if  not  in  print,  we  speak  of 
their  insanely  grasping  temper,  and  they  retort,  with 
less  reserve,  by  references  to  our  celebrated  egoism. 
Both  reproaches  are  true.  Our  mercantile  capital- 
ism and  their  financial  capitalism,  each  predatory, 
each  egoistic,  but  in  very  different  ways,  have  com- 


70  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

bined  to  make  a  settlement  which  is  a  nightmare  of 
economic  lunacy.  If  we  incline  now  to  bestride  the 
fallen  foe  to  protect  him  from  French  greed,  let 
us  not  forget  that  it  was  we,  by  our  protracted 
blockade  and  our  merciless  ruin  of  his  commerce, 
who  made  him  the  starved,  resourceless,  insolvent 
debtor,  from  whom  France  can  extract  nothing  fur- 
ther. Between  us,  we  have  taken  his  tools,  a  thing 
the  common  law  forbids.  Without  his  ships,  his 
cranes,  his  harbor  dredgers,  his  locomotives,  his  coal 
and  his  iron  ore,  how  can  he  work  to  fill  the  French 
exchequer  ? 

From  this  digression  on  the  indemnity,  let  us  re- 
turn to  the  peculiar  and  distinctive  characters  of  the 
two  allied  brands  of  militarism.  Ours  works  by 
the  naval  arm,  with  the  conquest  of  world-trade  for 
its  primary  aim.  French  militarism,  on  the  other 
hand,  seems  to  return  to  the  Napoleonic  pattern,  and 
is  concerned  mainly  in  exacting  a  tribute,  which  will 
be  paid,  year  by  year,  for  five-and-thirty  years  to 
come.  The  sanction,  the  compe'lling  force  behind 
this  tribute  is  the  French  army,  planted  on  German 
soil,  and  closing  round  it  by  means  of  the  "  barbed 
wire  "  entanglement  of  its  minor  Central  European 
Allies,  each  armed,  munitioned  and  instructed  from 
French  arsenals  and  French  military  schools.  The 
image  of  the  future  which  presents  itself  is  that  of 
all  Central  Europe  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a 
camp  of  prisoners  of  war,  kept  at  work  for  the 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER      71 

benefit  of  their  gaolers,  by  a  system  of  calculated 
intimidation.  At  any  moment,  for  any  defect  in  the 
fulfillment  of  impossible  demands,  the  French  army 
may  roll  onwards  and  occupy  ydt  other  German 
towns  and  coal-fields.  The  French  envisage  victory 
as  an  investment.  The  capital  of  blood  is  to  yield 
its  yearly  percentage.  The  mind  of  the  financier 
shapes  this  militarism,  as  the  mind  of  the  merchant 
shapes  ours. 

We  have  our  labor-saving  device,  the  blockade, 
which  spares  us  the  fatigues  and  risks  of  invasion. 
The  French  have  their  analogous  invention.  They 
wage  war  by  proxy.  The  Poles  fill  this  part  in 
their  war  on  Soviet  Russia.  The  negroes  are  the 
selected  force  for  the  coercion  of  Germany.  Mili- 
tarism is  a  risky  tool.  At  the  end  of  the  war  there 
was  no  white  population  willing  to  endure  indefi- 
nitely the  fatigues  of  fresh  campaigns.  The  muti- 
nies in  the  French  fleet  and  land  forces  at  Odessa 
were  a  warning  that  the  Republic  must  be  sparing 
in  its  future  use  of  white  troops.  They  might  re- 
fuse service,  and,  what  is  worse,  they  might  even 
be  won  by  Bolshevik  propaganda.  From  any  dan- 
ger of  that  kind  these  black  troops  are  immune,  for 
many  of  them  are  drawn  from  the  most  primitive 
tribes  of  Central  Africa,  which  practiced  cannibal- 
ism in  recent  years,  if  they  have  even  now  abandoned 
it.  These  negro  troops  are  as  automatic  as  a  ma- 
chine gun  and  as  little  likely  to  be  demoralized  by 


'J2  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

sympathy.  Their  known  barbarity  towards  men  and 
their  appetites  towards  women  add  the  effect  of 
terror  to  their  unquestionable  bravery.  No  Power 
could  desire  a  more  serviceable  arm  for  any  pur- 
pose of  coercion,  and  there  are  no  electors  in  Africa 
who  will  resent  their  absence  in  sunless  climates  on 
distant  fronts.  It  was,  even  before  the  war,  the 
design  of  the  French  General  Staff  to  supplement 
its  white  recruits  by  these  black  levies.  There  are 
now  in  force  decrees  which  establish  conscription  in 
all  the  colonies  of  French  Africa,  and  the  intention 
is  to  employ  these  black  troops  during  two  of  their 
three  years  of  service  outside  their  own  Continent.^ 
One  hardly  knows  which  aspect  of  their  policy  is 
the  more  sinister.  It  is  a  menace  and  an  affront  to 
civilization  in  Europe,  and,  above  all,  a  threat  to 
Socialism.  It  means  from  the  African  standpoint 
a  reversion  to  the  morals  and  methods  of  the  slave 
trade,  for  no  tradition  of  patriotism  can  possibly 
reconcile  these  men  to  the  prospect  of  fighting  under 
constraint  for  their  white  conquerors.  When  the 
Allies  decided  to  deprive  Germany  of  her  African 
col'onies,  one  of  their  loudly-professed  reasons  was 
that  they  desired  to  save  that  continent  from  mili- 
tarism. That  was  always  a  hypocritical  reason,  for 
long  before  the  end  of  the  war,  the  Germen  Colonial 

^  According  to  an  answer  to  a  question  in  Parliament  {,see 
the  Times,  17th  June,  1920),  France  has  at  present  660,000 
men  of  all  ranks  under  arms,  of  whom  190,000  are  colored 
troops. 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER       73 

Minister,  Dr.  Solf,  had  proposed  an  international 
agreement  to  prohibit  the  recruiting  of  Africans, 
save  for  purposes  of  local  police.  France  has  begun 
the  systematic  militarization  of  Africa,  and  other 
Powers  will  probably  follow  her  example.  The 
pasting  of  Senegalese  sentries  in  Goethe's  house  at 
Frankfort  was  a  symbolic  act  which  revealed  the 
indifTerence  of  this  new  militarism  to  all  the  finer 
values  of  European  culture. 

THE   RULE   OF   THE   ALLIES 

With  these  aims  and  with  these  instruments  of 
coercion,  the  military  Alliance  of  Great  Britain  and 
France  has  constituted  itself  the  governing  power 
throughout  the  old  world.  The  big  Empires  which 
might  have  withstood  it  are  shattered,  and  over  the 
fragmentary  multitude  of  little  States  which  have 
replaced  them,  it  endeavors  to  hold  sway.  The  in- 
tention is,  as  Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  told  Parlia- 
ment, to  make  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  Alliance  a 
permanent  institution.  Every  international  ques- 
tion of  any  consequence  depends  on  its  decision, 
and  the  League  of  Nations  is  permitted  to  handle 
only  such  questions  as  the  Allied  Supreme  Council 
is  pleased  to  refer  to  it.  The  Council  of  the  League 
has  developed  neither  will  nor  initiative  nor  ambi- 
tion of  its  own,  nor  is  it  ever  likely  to  do  so,  while 
it  is  composed  only  of  delegates  named  for  each 
meeting  by  the  Cabinets  of  the  Allies.     The  one 


74  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

neutral,  Spain,  which  has  a  seat  on  the  Council,  was 
evidently  chosen  by  the  Allies  because  she  is  the 
least  likely  to  forward  any  disinterested  or  humane 
policy  which  might  be  inconvenient  to  them. 

The  fatal  objection  to  the  Allied  Council  is  not 
merely  that  it  represents  only  the  victors  in  the  late 
war,  and  only  three  of  them.  The  main  objection 
to  it  is  that  it  is  composed  of  men  who  could  only 
by  a  miracle  take  a  disinterested  and  impartial  view 
of  the  questions  which  come  before  them  for  deci- 
sion. The  Prime  Ministers  of  Great  Britain,  France 
and  Italy  are  men  whose  daily  thoughts  are  neces- 
sarily and  properly  busied  with  the  interests  of 
their  own  countries.  Can  men  who  must  be  en- 
gaged every  hour  of  every  day  in  promoting  the 
economic  and  strategic  aggrandisement  of  these  three 
Powers,  divest  themselves  of  these  preoccupations, 
and  assume  the  quasi- judicial  impartiality  without 
which  an  International  Council  would  be  a  mock- 
ery? ^  The  feat  would  be  impossible.  In  point  of 
fact  the  Supreme  Allied  Council  works  on  the  lines 
of  a  geographical  division  of  interests  usual  between 
Allies.     That  always  was  the  accepted  convention, 

1  The  Executive  Council  of  the  League  is  open  to  the  same 
objection.  If  ever  it  is  possible  to  make  the  League  a  reality, 
two  constitutional  changes  seem  essential:  (i)  The  Assembly 
should  be  an  International  Parliament,  indirectly  elected  from 
the  national  Chambers  by  proportional  representation;  (2)  A 
Political  Council,  elected  by  the  Assembly,  should  be  created 
to  deal  with  all  disputes.  The  present  Executive  might  re- 
main to  devise  action  when  recommended  by  this  Council. 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER       75 

both  in  pre-war  Europe  and  during  the  war.  Each 
Empire  has  its  more  or  less  clearly  recognized  zone 
of  expansion,  penetration  and  influence,  and  a  good 
Ally  will  not  interfere  with  a  colleague  so  long  as 
these  lines  of  demarcation  are  observed.  The  classi- 
cal example  of  this  recognition  of  zones  is  to  be 
found  in  the  arrangement  between  Russia  and  the 
Western  Allies,  which  was  embodied  in  the  famous 
Secret  Agreements  concluded  on  the  eve  of  the  fall 
of  Tsardom.  France  obtained  the  assent  of  Russia 
to  her  plan  for  creating  a  buffer  State  under  French 
protection  out  of  the  German  territory  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine.  In  return  the  right  of  the  Tsar 
was  recognized  to  dispose  as  he  pleased  of  Poland, 
and  of  the  Eastern  frontier  generally.^ 

Arrangements  of  this  type  render  any  working 
of  disinterested  opinion  impossible.  That  is  indeed 
their  object.  The  egoism  of  the  interested  Power 
is  given  free  scope,  and  each  party  to  the  Alliance 
condones  the  aggrandizement  of  the  other,  in  re- 
turn for  an  equal  license  for  itself.  The  whole 
comity  of  expansive  Empires  rests,  and  always  has 
rested,  on  this  foundation.  What  agreements  of 
this  type,  tacit  or  explicit,  there  may  be  among  the 
Allies  to-day,  one  can  only  guess.  When  the  Pre- 
miers meet  in  the  Supreme  Council  with  many  items 
of  business  before  them,  the  process  of  decision  is 

1  See   The  Secret   Treaties,  by   F.   Seymour   Cocks,   p.   67, 
National  Labor  Press. 


^6  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

inevitably  one  of  barter.  There  can  be,  in  such  a 
secret  Council,  which  exists  primarily  to  adjust  the 
clashing  interests  of  the  chief  AlUes,  no  broad  con- 
sideration of  the  general  good,  and  no  effective 
checking  of  the  egoism  of  one  Ally  by  its  fellows. 
This  is  the  fundamental  vice  of  all  Alliances.  So 
long  as  one  Ally  has  need  of  the  other,  it  cannot 
adopt  the  pose  of  the  stern  moral  censor.  We  were 
officially  blind,  during  the  existence  of  the  pre-war 
Entente,  to  all  the  misdeeds  of  Tsarist  Russia.  If 
we,  or  even  more  obviously  the  French,  require 
Poland  as  a  "  barrier "  against  Russia  and  Ger- 
many, we  cannot  afford  to  take  the  Polish  oppres- 
sion of  the  Jews  too  tragically.  What  one  asks  of 
an  Ally  is  bayonets,  not  virtue. 

That  the  ascendancy  of  the  Alliance  over  the 
League  of  Nations  is  intended  to  be  permanent,  a 
glance  at  the  latest  of  the  Peace  Treaties  will  show. 
The  Turkish  Treaty  is  in  many  ways  the  worst  and 
the  most  absurd  of  the  series.  The  whole  of  Turk- 
ish Turkey  is  in  armed  revolt  against  it,  and  it  can 
be  enforced,  if  at  all,  as  Signor  Nitti  said,  only  by 
another  war,  for  which  the  major  Allies  lack  the 
will  and  the  means.  It  outrages  nationality  by 
extending  Greek  dominion  over  regions,  especially 
Western  Thrace  and  the  Hinterland  of  Smyrna, 
which  have  been  proved  by  the  recent  investigations 
of  allied  officials  to  contain  only  minorities  of 
Greeks.     It  forces  Britain  and  France  as  manda- 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER 


77 


tory  Powers  on  the  protesting  and  "  rebellious  " 
peoples  of  Mesopotamia  and  Syria,  though  the 
Covenant  promised  that  the  wishes  of  the  population 
should  be  a  "  principal  consideration  "  in  assigning 
mandates.  It  fails  to  provide  a  protector  for  the 
Armenians,  who  call  for  one  in  their  dire  peril.  It 
rashly  affronts  Moslem  sentiment,  yet  it  fails  to  give 
effect  to  Christian  sympathy  with  the  most  pitiable 
of  all  the  victims  of  the  Turks.  Finally,  it  reveals 
how  little  real  part  the  Allies  intend  to  concede  to 
the  League  of  Nations.  The  three  chief  Allies  and 
not  the  League  will  police  the  Turkish  Straits.  It 
is  again  these  same  three  Allies  who  are  to  control 
the  entire  finance  of  Turkey,  through  a  permanent 
Commission.  The  Commission,  if  the  Treaty  could 
ever  be  enforced,  would  govern  Turkey  even  in  its 
internal  affairs,  as  absolutely  as  the  British  control 
governed  Egypt  before  the  war.  No  Budget  can  be 
valid,  no  tax  or  duty  levied,  without  its  assent. 
There  was  much  to  be  said  for  the  principle  of  plac- 
ing Turkey,  at  least  for  a  term  of  years,  under  some 
form  of  international  control.  The  attraction  of 
that  idea  lay,  however,  in  the  assumption  that  this 
control  would  be  disinterested.  Here,  however,  is 
a  proposal  to  vest  the  Government  of  Turkey  in 
the  hands  of  the  three  Powers  who  are  openly  carv- 
ing it  into  zones  for  economic  exploitation.  We 
divide  with  France  the  oil  of  Mesopotamia.  Italy 
shares  with  France  the  coal  of  Eregli,  and  marks 


78  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

off  her  economic  zone  in  Adalia.  All  three  take 
over  the  interests  and  concessions  which  German 
enterprise  had  acquired.  Financial  control  by 
Powers  who  start  by  affirming  these  claims,  can 
mean  only  exploitation. 

It  wanted  only  the  incident  of  the  Polish  war  on 
Russia  to  complete  the  proof  that  a  League  of  Na- 
tions, while  it  languishes  in  the  shadow  of  a  great 
military  Alliance,  cannot  perform  the  functions  for 
which  it  was  created.  To  define  the  League  as  an 
organization  to  avert  wars,  would  be  to  limit  its 
purpose  too  narrowly.  If  it  were  no  more  than 
that,  it  would  be  much  less.  Only  in  so  far  as  it 
makes  itself  necessary  in  peace,  will  it  be  obeyed  in 
war.  It  ought  to  permeate  all  our  international  life, 
not  merely  to  avert  mischiefs,  but  to  confer  bene- 
fits. Its  most  obvious  duty,  as  the  Labor  Party 
urged  from  the  start,  should  have  been  to  ration 
raw  materials  among  industrial  peoples  according  to 
their  needs.  These  seem  to-day  high  and  remote  am- 
bitions, and  it  requires  an  effort  even  to  recall  the  fact 
that  the  League  was  founded  primarily  to  make  an 
end  of  wars.  Even  that  elementary  function  it  can- 
not perform.  One  need  not  pause  to  argue  that  the 
Polish  attack  on  Russia  was  a  wanton  aggression, 
inspired  by  insane  ambitions.  That  is  irrelevant. 
The  fact  which  concerned  the  League  was  that  this 
war,  arrested  during  the  winter  by  a  secret  armistice, 
broke  out  again  in  the  spring  after  the  amplest 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER    79 

warnings.  It  was  no  little  war,  Poland  had  over 
half  a  million  men  in  the  field.  Each  belligerent  was 
bankrupt  and  hal f-starved.  They  were  fighting  over 
territory  repeatedly  devastated  by  war  and  civil  war, 
by  revolution  and  pogroms.  There  were,  according 
to  the  Director  of  the  American  Red  Cross,  a  quarter 
of  a  million  cases  of  hunger-typhus  on  the  Polish  side 
(not  to  reckon  the  other)  of  the  fighting  line.  Yet, 
in  reply  to  the  appeal  of  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  Lord 
Curzon  formally  refused  to  set  the  machinery  of 
the  League  of  Nations  in  motion  either  to  prevent 
or  check  this  war.  "  Any  war  or  threat  of  war," 
so  runs  the  eleventh  Article  of  the  Covenant,  "  is 
hereby  declared  a  matter  of  concern  to  the  whole 
League,"  which  must  "  take  any  action  that  may  be 
deemed  wise  and  effective  to  safeguard  the  peace 
of  nations."  One  need  not  discuss  the  riddle  why 
in  this  case  the  League  took  no  such  action.  We 
were  supplying  the  Poles  with  munitions  and  France 
was  sending  guns  and  instructors.  Naturally, 
Powers  which  as  Allies  allow  a  war  to  break  out  and 
back  the  aggressor  with  material  aid,  cannot,  as 
Members  of  the  League,  use  the  League  to  stop  it. 
The  League  in  such  matters  will  be  used  or  ignored 
as  the  interests  and  calculations  of  the  Allies  dictate. 
But  even  if  the  League  had  acted,  and  acted 
promptly,  could  a  Council  composed  of  official 
persons,  who  with  one  exception  are  bound  in  duty 
to  regard  Poland  as  an  Ally,  conceivably  render 


8o  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

an  impartial  judgment  in  a  dispute  between  this 
Ally  and  Russia?  There  can  be  no  League  while 
the  Alliance  endures. 

THE   FUTURE  OF  THE  ALLIANCE 

To  speculate  on  the  future  of  the  Alliance  would 
involve  a  risky  essay  in  prophecy.  The  intention 
to  maintain  it  as  the  groundwork  of  European 
polity  is  loudly  proclaimed,  but  plainly  it  works  un- 
comfortably. The  dissensions  between  London  and 
Paris  over  the  German  indemnity,  the  Turkish 
Treaty  and  our  relation  to  Russia,  are  matters  of 
public  knowledge  and  daily  comment.  Italy,  in 
dread  of  bankruptcy  and  revolution,  with  bitteir 
grievances  against  both  the  stronger  Allies,  openly 
preparing  a  rapprochement  with  Germany  and 
Austria,  and  turning  in  her  complete  disillusionment 
to  the  Statesman  who  would  have  kept  her  neutral 
in  the  war,  has  morally  seceded  from  the  Alliance. 
By  naming  Signer  Giolitti  her  Premier,  she  has  sent 
in  her  resignation  as  a  victor.  The  Alliance  rests 
now  on  the  fragile  tie  of  interest  and  fear  which 
still  in  some  measure  unites  the  Governments  of 
Britain  and  France.  Its  power  wanes  visibly. 
The  minor  Allies  quarrel  among  themselves,  and  no 
effective  central  command  imposes  its  authority  upon 
them.  Half  Europe  has  been  Balkanized,  but  Paris 
and  London  cannot  exert  in  Central  and  Eastern 
Europe  the   authority   which   Berlin,   Vienna   and 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER     8i 

Petersburg  used  to  wield.  This  Continent,  with  a 
civihzation  that  has  lost  its  nerve  centers,  falls  vis- 
ibly apart  into  anarchic  fragments.  The  power  of 
the  Alliance  wanes  with  its  unity.  It  has  drafted  a 
settlement  which  it  lacks  the  force  to  impose. 

One  may  reckon,  indeed,  on  a  change  of  spirit  at 
the  centers.  Unfortunately,  such  changes  proceed 
at  very  uneven  paces.  They  are  apt  to  follow  eco- 
nomic decline,  and  when  that  is  evident,  the  power 
of  action  is  lost.  Italy  returns  to  a  sort  of  furious 
sanity,  but  only  to  find  that  the  danger  which  has 
made  her  sane  has  robbed  her  of  the  power  to  wield 
an  influence.  British  opinion  veers  also,  though 
with  more  deliberation.  But  in  France  a  change 
seems  of  all  desirable  things  the  least  likely.  Her 
partial  eclipse  during  the  fifty  years  that  followed 
Sedan  has  obliterated  our  recollection  of  the  per- 
sistent military  tradition  of  this  most  nationalist  of 
peoples.  We  are  apt  to  forget  that,  in  spite  of 
Republican  forms,  a  nation  of  small  peasant  owners 
and  small  investors  never  will  be  Liberal  in  the  Brit- 
ish sense  of  the  word.  The  brilliance  of  the  mur- 
dered Jaures  led  us  to  overestimate  the  power  of 
French  Socialism.  The  folly  with  which  the  French 
Trade  Unions  were  led  in  the  recent  general  strike, 
and  the  ease  with  which  they  were  crushed,  warn  us 
that  the  industrial  proletariat  is  much  too  weak  to 
reverse  or  even  to  moderate  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ing class,  while  in  numbers  it  must  always  be  out- 


82  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

voted  by  the  rural  population.  The  significant  fact 
about  the  Parliamentary  life  of  France  is,  that  since 
the  fall  of  M.  Caillaux,  such  opposition  as  there  has 
been,  first  to  M.  Clemenceau  and  then  to  M.  Mille- 
rand,  came  from  experienced  opportunist  politicians, 
who  felt  or  affected  an  even  more  ardent  and  reck- 
less nationalism  than  theirs.  From  M.  Poincare, 
M.  Briand,  and  M.  Barthou  among  the  older  men,  to 
M.  Franklin-Bouillon  among  the  aspirants,  every 
politician  out  of  oiifice  has  criticized  the  Government, 
not  for  its  exacting  and  selfish  policy,  but  for  its 
weakness  in  imposing  its  will,  now  on  its  Allies 
and  again  on  its  enemies.  The  opposite  phenome- 
non prevails  in  England.  A  return  to  moderation 
under  these  conditions  is  not  easy  to  foresee.  No 
French  Government  dare  face  the  tax-payer  with 
the  news  that  he  must  pay  the  war-bill.  Direct  tax- 
ation, even  the  mildest,  is  a  barely  tolerated  novelty 
in  France.  Our  propertied  class  gains  largely  and 
spends  largely,  in  the  belief  that  it  will  easily  replace 
what  it  has  to  disburse.  It  endures  high  taxation 
with  comparative  good-will.  That  is  also  true  of 
the  Germans.  It  is  the  industrial  habit  of  mind. 
The  French  amass  with  difficulty  and  spend  with 
care.  Taxation  causes  them  a  sort  of  physical  pain. 
The  French  will  not  modify  their  European  policy 
without  further  pertinacious  efforts  to  impose  their 
tribute  by  violence. 

When  at  length  the  Alliance  breaks,  or  ceases  to 


THE  CONCENTRATION  OF  POWER    83 

have  more  than  a  normal  existence,  can  the  League 
of  Nations  replace  it?  There  is  much  truth  in  the 
contention  of  British  IMinisters  that  the  League  can- 
not in  the  present  state  of  the  world  "  act  effec- 
tively." The  reason,  however,  is  not  its  youth  and 
immaturity.  The  reason  is  that  the  League  could 
not  administer  these  Treaties.  It  would  have  to 
begin  by  revising  the  Treaties  so  drastically  that 
nothing  of  their  spirit  remained.  That,  however, 
involves  either  the  ability  to  command,  which  the 
Allies  possessed  in  the  first  month  of  victory,  or 
else  a  unanimous  spirit  of  reasonableness  in  Europe. 
Under  this  Covenant  one  dissentient  on  the  Council 
of  the  League  could  veto  any  change,  and  even  were 
the  Council  unanimous,  it  would  not  be  easy  to 
coerce  even  the  minor  Allies.  Europe  had  a  brief 
Liberal  movement  when  Mr.  Wilson  first  arrived 
in  Paris.  That  chance  has  gone,  and  it  may  not 
return.  Nor  is  it  probable,  even  if  America  should 
eventually  enter  the  League,  that  she  will  do  so  with- 
out reservations  that  undermine!  it.  Her  objection 
is  precisely  to  its  governing,  authoritative  aspect. 
The  Covenant  was  far  from  setting  up  anything 
which  could  be  regarded  as  a  world-government,  or 
even  as  the  nucleus  of  a  federal  constitution.  But 
weak  as  the  Covenant  is  in  this  respect,  it  claims 
much  more  authority  than  American  sentiment  will 
brook.  Dictatorial  powers  for  the  League  would 
have   been    unnecessary    had   the   settlement    itself 


84  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

rested  on  consent.  Our  present  problem  would  not 
have  arisen  if  Imperial  concentrations  of  authority 
had  survived  in  Berlin,  Petersburg  and  Vienna.  It 
is  the  process  of  dissolution  and  Balkanization  which 
have  made  a  world-government  necessary.  It  can- 
not be  the  League  as  we  know  it  to-day.  It  cannot 
be  forever  the  Alliance. 


CHAPTER  III 

AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS 

It  was  amid  the  experiences  of  the  Napoleonic 
struggle  that  Malthus  alarmed  our  grandfathers  with 
his  gloomy  essay  on  population.  Another  universal 
war  has  presented  us  with  the  problem  of  popula- 
tion in  a  new  form.  It  is  not  niggardly  nature  or 
prolific  man  that  has  made  this  problem,  but  the 
perverse  contrivances  of  statecraft.  Its  simple  ele- 
ments may  be  stated  in  a  few  sentences.  Before  the 
war  her  world-trade  enabled  Germany  to  export 
manufactured  goods  on  a  scale  that  allowed  her  to 
purchase  foreign-grown  food  for  about  fifteen  mil- 
lions of  her  population.  Her  world-trade  has  been 
destroyed  by  the  peace.  If  it  is  in  some  measure 
revived,  it  cannot  be  on  the  basis  of  an  exchange  of 
goods.  The  meaning  of  an  indemnity  is,  in  concrete 
terms,  that  the  nation  which  pays  it  must  export 
goods  for  the  consumption  of  the  victors,  without 
receiving  their  equivalent  in  imports.  Some  im- 
port, if  only  of  raw  materials,  there  must  of  course 
be,  but  it  is  only  by  the  surplus  of  exports  over  im- 
ports that  Germany  can,   year  by  year,   pay  the 

85 


86  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

tribute  which  the  victors  have  imposed  upon  her. 
Every  quarter  of  wheat  which  she  receives  from 
abroad  diminishes  the  possible  surplus  available  for 
the  indemnity,  and  while  her  currency  remains  the 
nearly  worthless  medium  that  it  is,  her  population 
must  perform  an  inordinate  amount  of  labor  in 
order  to  buy  this  foreign  food  and  to  pay  for  its 
transport  in  foreign  ships.  Worse  still  is  the  case  of 
Austria,  where,  as  the  result  of  depreciation  of  the 
Krone,  even  skilled  artisans  earn  in  our  currency  only 
2d,  an  hour.  What  this  means  in  human  values  will 
be  grasped  at  once.  In  order  to  earn  a  loaf  of  bread 
made  with  American  flour,  an  English  artisan  need 
work  only  for  half  an  hour.  An  Austrian  artisan 
must,  for  the  same  real  reward  in  foreign  food, 
work  for  six  hours.  Even  so  the  problem  of  pay- 
ment is  not  solved.  Hitherto  Germany  has  im- 
ported foreign  food  ^  partly  by  using  up  her  scanty 
reserves  of  gold,  partly  by  running  into  debt,  and 
partly  by  exporting  coal,  to  which,  in  strict  law, 
the  Allies  had  a  prior  claim.  H  ever  she  settles 
down  in  earnest  to  pay  the  indemnity  in  the 
measure  which  the  Allies  contemplate,  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  she  can  afford  to  spend  anything  on  the 
purchase  of  foreign  food. 

What  then  will  become  of  the  fifteen   millions 

1  Referring  to  this  importation  of  food  by  Germany,  the 
"  Economic  Survey "  of  the  Department  of  Overseas  Trade 
describes  it  as  necessary,  and  yet  as  "  a  course  which  she  can- 
n'ot  afford  to  take."    (p.  35). 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  87 

who  lived  in  pre-war  days  by  exchanging  their  man- 
ufactures for  foreign  food?  Mr.  Hoover  gave  one 
possible  answer,  when  he  said  that  twelve  millions 
of  the  German  race  would  have  to  emigrate.  That 
is  a  soothing  way  of  stating  the  facts.  They  can- 
not emigrate.  The  whole  of  the  Allied  world  is 
closed  to  them,  including  the  United  States.  Latin 
America  and  Russia  are  the  only  possible  fields  for 
emigration.  The  scarcity  and  dearness  of  shipping 
forbids,  if  there  were  no  other  reason,  any  mass 
emigration  in  a  short  space  of  time  to  South 
America,  though  on  a  small  scale  it  has  begun,  and 
will  probably  increase.  Russia  would  welcome 
emigrants  from  the  skilled  Socialistic  town-workers, 
but  that  also  can  be  only  on  a  small  scale,  while  her 
own  food  difficulties  continue.  If  emigration  pro- 
vides no  early  solution,  there  remain  only  two 
alternatives,  the  reduction  of  the  population  by 
death  and  the  restriction  of  births,  or  else  the  lower- 
ing of  the  whole  standard  of  life.  Either  the  Ger- 
man race  will  diminish  by  some  figure  not  far  short 
of  these  twelve  or  fifteen  millions,  or  else  it  will 
struggle  to  subsist  on  siege  rations,  sinking  in  the 
process  to  an  elementary  level  of  civilization. 
Where  bread  is  short  there  can  be  little  culti- 
vation of  the  things  of  the  mind.  That  is  at  present 
a  fair  statement  of  the  case  of  Central  Europe,  and 
there  are  Allied  Statesmen  who  contemplate  it  in 
cold  blood  as  a  penmanent  consequence  of  the  war. 


88  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

Mr.  Benes,  the  Foreign  Minister  of  Czecho-Slovakia, 
said  publicly  the  other  day  that  Vienna  is  destined 
to  lose  half  its  present  population.  Populations  do 
not  expire  by  the  million  painlessly.  The  mental 
and  physical  agony  which  Vienna  will  go  through 
before  it  has  reached  a  level  consistent  with  Czech 
ambitions,  means  a  hell  more  prolonged  and  more 
horrible  than  the  war  itself.  It  is  not  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  which  this  hideous  process  promotes. 
Feudal  and  agrarian  Roumania,  against  whose  name 
there  stands  in  the  records  of  civilization  not  one 
entry  of  one  solitary  achievement  in  letters,  science, 
or  the  arts,  will  thrive  and  multiply.  It  is  the  science 
and  the  music  of  Vienna,  which  gave  us,  this  one 
city,  from  Haydn  to  Brahms,  more  than  half  the 
world's  treasure  of  sound,  that  the  settlement  has 
doomed. 

COAIJ 

One  might  state  this  whole  problem  of  popula- 
tion in  terms  of  coal.  It  was  the  abundance  of 
coal  in  Germany  as  in  Great  Britain  which  underlay 
their  industrial  prosperity,  and  enabled  them  to  feed 
a  population  far  in  excess  of  their  internal  food 
resources.  Coal  means  wealth  and  power,  and  the 
motif  of  coal  runs  through  all  the  jangled  music  of 
the  war  and  the  settlement.  The  fixed  purpose  of 
German  capitalistic  militarism,  was,  while  its  hopes 
ran  high,  to  annex  the  northern  coal-fields  of  France, 
and  to  control  the  mines  of  Belgium.     The  plan 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  89 

was  even  worked  out  in  a  Memorial  presented  by 
German  industrialists  to  the  Chancellor,  by  which  an 
indemnity,  to  be  levied  on  France,  would  cover  the 
cost  of  purchasing  these  mines. ^  When  these  hopes 
finally  vanished,  Ludendorff  wrecked  the  French 
mines.  The  purpose  of  that  destruction  was  not 
military;  it  was  done  in  order  to  lame  the  industry 
of  a  rival.  Those  who  did  it  must  have  been  foolish 
enough  to  suppose  that  they  thereby  assured  to  their 
own  coal-owners  and  exporters  the  profits  of  the 
European  scarcity  which  would  result.  Capitalism, 
once  more,  aims  not  at  plenty  but  at  profit.  That 
was  the  first  act  in  the  continental  tragedy  of  coal, 
which  is  not  yet  completed.  The  scarcity  of  coal, 
due  firstly  to  Ludendorff's  vandal  act,  followed  at 
once,  but  it  is  not  German  capitalism  which  has 
profited  by  it.  It  has  brought  a  rich  harvest  of  gain 
to  our  own  coal-owners  and  shippers.  While  we 
expressed  our  just  indignation  at  the  destruction, 
and  were  prodigal  in  our  verbal  sympathy  with 
France,  we  acted  under  the  prompting  of  the  usual 
capitalistic  motives.  We  charged  the  French  115 
or  even  130  shillings  a  ton  for  coal,  nor  was  this 
merely  the  act  of  a  greedy  industry.  Coal  was  con- 
trolled all  the  while,  and  the  Government  actually 
reduced  the  price  to  the  home  consumer  last  winter 
by  ten  shillings  a  ton,  and  made  up  the  loss  by 

1  There  is  no  evidence  that  responsible  German  Statesmen 
adopted  this  plan, 


90  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

profiteering  at  the  expense  of  our  Allies,  To  Italy, 
when  freight  was  added,  we  even  sold  our  coal  at 
over  fi2  a  ton.  In  Vienna  meantime,  while  the 
tramways  stood  still  and  the  schools  were  closed  for 
lack  of  coal,  the  people  were  cutting  down  the  superb 
wood  outside  the  city  which  had  been  its  pride  and 
delight,  and  staggering  back,  half  starved  as  they 
were,  under  their  loads  of  timber  over  long  miles 
of  streets. 

The  Peace  Treaties  more  than  reproduce  the  worst 
of  the  German  plans  in  regard  to  coal.  Though 
the  ambition  of  France  to  annex  the  Saar  territory 
outright  was  successfully  opposed  by  Mr.  Wilson, 
she  has  obtained  its  valuable  coal-mines  as  a  per- 
petual possession,  and  she  will  occupy  the  territory 
for  fifteen  years.  The  fate  of  Upper  Silesia  is  still 
in  doubt.  It  has  been  assigned  to  Poland,  with  the 
whole  of  its  coal  deposits,  but  a  plebiscite  has  still 
to  ratify  this  decision.  The  majority  of  the  popu- 
lation is  certainly  Polish  by  race,  but  the  territory 
had  never  belonged  to  Poland ;  the  people  had  been 
to  some  extent  assimilated,  and  the  figures  of  recent 
elections  never  yielded  a  majority  under  manhood 
suffrage  for  the  Polish  nationalist  candidates.  Po- 
land has  been  allowed  to  annex  in  Posen  and  West 
Prussia  big  German  minorities,  which  will  give  her 
over  two  million  unwilling  German  subjects.  There 
is  something  to  be  said  for  the  argument  that  it 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  91 

would  be  only  fair,  by  way  of  compensation,  to 
leave  Upper  Silesia,  with  its  indispensable  coal  and 
its  Polish  inhabitants,  to  Germany.  Again,  the  deci- 
sion to  draw  the  frontiers  of  Czecho-Slovakia,  not 
on  racial  but  on  historical  lines,  is  one  of  the  main 
causes  of  the  ruin  of  Vienna.  A  good  deal  of  the 
coal  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia  is  found  on  the  fringes 
of  these  provinces,  which  have  a  German  population 
and  are  easily  detachable.  Many  of  these  mines  are 
owned  by  German-Austrian  companies  and  worked 
by  German-Austrian  labor.  They  ought  by  rights 
to  have  fallen  to  German-Austria.  The  policy  of 
the  Czech  State  is  to  build  up  its  own  industrial  pre- 
dominance at  the  expense  especially  of  Vienna,  and 
for  that  purpose  it  has  ruthlessly  restricted  the  ex- 
port of  coal,  and  thereby  lamed  not  merely  those 
Austrian  industries  which  depended  on  coal  for 
power,  but  also  the  production  of  steel  from  the  ores 
of  which  Austria  has  a  fair  supply. 

These  annexations  of  coal  basins  at  the  expense 
of  the  German  race  would  have  been  sufficiently 
serious  if  they  had  stood  alone.  The  Treaty  adds, 
however,  provisions  for  the  levying  of  a  specific 
tribute  in  coal  for  the  benefit  of  France,  Belgium  and 
Italy.  In  so  far  as  this  is  intended  to  make  good 
the  destruction  of  the  French  mines  by  Ludendorff, 
it  is  just.  The  coal  tribute  goes,  however,  far  be- 
yond that  reasonable  limit.     That  just  reparation 


92  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

accounts  for  20,000,000  tons  annually,  and  this 
quantity  will  diminish,  as  the  French  mines  are  grad- 
ually restored.  The  loss  to  Germany,  apart  from 
this  first  charge,  amounts  (i)  to  14,000,000  tons, 
the  yearly  pre-war  yield  of  the  Saar  and  Alsace- 
Lorraine  mines;  and  (2)  an  average  tribute  of  25,- 
000,000  tons  annually  to  be  paid,  in  addition  to  the 
levy  for  reparation,  to  France,  Italy  and  Belgium. 
(3)  If  the  Upper  Silesian  mines  are  also  taken, 
that  will  involve  a  further  annual  loss  of  43,800,000 
tons.  It  is  true  that  the  Treaty  secures  to  Germany 
the  right  to  buy  this  coal  from  Poland,  but  even  if 
she  actually  gets  the  coal,  the  purchase  will  affect 
her  trade  balance.  The  net  result,  when  allo.wance 
is  made  for  the  fact  that  Germany  in  her  diminished 
area  will  require  less  coal  than  before  the  war,  is 
reckoned  by  Mr.  Maynard  Keynes  to  be  that  Ger- 
many will  need  110,000,000  tons  annually,  if  she  is 
to  maintain  her  existing  industries,  but  will  in  fact 
have  at  her  disposal  an  average  of  only  60,000,000 
tons,  and  in  the  first  years  of  the  peace  only  55,000,- 
000  tons.  In  ^oint  of  fact  the  production  in  Ger- 
many has  fallen  off  even  more  seriously  than  he 
estimated,  owing  partly  to  the  dilapidation  of  min- 
ing machinery  and  material  during  the  war,  partly 
to  the  decline  in  the  physique  of  the  miners,  due  to 
under-nourishment,  and  partly  to  the  political  unrest 
which  affects  all  German,  and  indeed  most  European 
workers.     One  need  not  spend  many  words  in  fore- 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  93 

casting  what  the  condition  of  an  industrial  country 
must  be  when  its  coal  supply  is  reduced  to  one  half.^ 
The  inference  is  clear  that  German  industry  cannot 
possibly  recover  anything  like  its  old  productivity. 
It  will  be  barely  able  to  supply  the  internal  market 
with  necessities,  even  if  the  level  of  comfort  sinks  to 
that  of  the  more  primitive  populations  of  Eastern 
Europe.  It  can  produce  very  little  for  export,  and 
the  coal  itself,  with  its  by-products,  will  be  almost 
the  sole  contribution  of  Germany  towards  the  in- 
demnity. 

THE   INDEMNITY 

Of  the  Indemnity  itself,  regarded  as  a  sum  meas- 
urably in  thousands  of  millions  sterling,  it  is  super- 
fluous to  say  much,  for  the  brilliant  and  lucid  book 

^  The  "  Economic  Survey  "  of  our  own  Department  of  Over- 
seas Trade  (p.  27)  says :  "  Germany  is  suffering  from  a  com- 
plete lack  of  raw  materials  in  almost  all  industries.  Produc- 
tion is  further  hampered  by  the  shortage  of  coal  as  well  as  by 
the  serious  depreciation  of  machinery."  The  "  Survey "  goes 
on  to  give  a  list  of  important  factories  temporarily  closed 
down  and  (p.  42)  states  that  the  foreign  trade  of  Germany 
is   "  at  present  practically  negligible." 

The  latest  obtainable  official  figures  (February.  1920)  of  the 
German  food  rations  show  that,  even  now,  they  are  still  only 
approximately  half  of  the  physiological  minimum.  About 
3,000  calories,  of  which  60  should  be  fats,  are  required  daily 
by  a  healthy  adult.  The  German  civilian  food  cards  supply 
only  1,545  calories,  of  which  25  are  fats. 

The  Spa  Conference  (July  1920)  which  opened  an  era  of 
direct  conversations  with  the  Germans,  led  to  a  considerable 
whittling  away  of  the  extravagant  demands   of  the  Treaty. 


94  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

of  Mr.  Keynes  has  treated  this  whole  subject  with 
unrivaled  authority.  The  whole  basis  of  the  as- 
sessment has  been  dishonest  from  the  start.  When 
Germany  laid  down  her  arms  and  accepted  an  armis- 
tice which  deprived  her  of  all  further  power  of  re- 
sistance, she  by  no  means  surrendered  uncondition- 
ally. She  surrendered  on  the  basis  of  the  Fourteen 
Points,  subject,  of  course,  to  the  reservations  which 
the  British  Government  placed  on  record.  An  hon- 
est reading  of  the  Points  and  the  letter  of  reserva- 
tion makes  the  German  Government  liable  for  the 
restoration  of  the  ravaged  districts,  and  also  for 
losses  suffered  by  civilians  in  such  episodes  of  the 
war  as  the  submarine  campaign  and  the  air-raids. 
But  to  add  to  this,  as  the  sophistical  Allied  lawyers 
have  done,  a  liability  to  pay  for  the  allowances  and 
pensions  disbursed  to  the  civilian  relatives  of  sol- 
diers, was  to  make  a  use  of  our  power  to  dictate, 
which  no  fair-minded  neutral  Court  would  be  likely 
to  sustain.  It  is  hard  to  say  what  the  total  of  an 
indemnity  based  on  the  admitted  liability  for  devas- 
tation  and    for   damage   done   to   civilians    should 

The  coal  tribute  was  reduced  to  24,000,000  tons  per  annum 
(exclusive,  of  course,  of  what  is  lost  in  the  Saar  and  may  be 
lost  in  Upper  Silesia).  The  residue  left  to  German  industry 
is  still  inadequate,  however.  The  strain,  moreover,  on  the 
Ruhr  miners  who  have  to  hew  out  this  tribute  would  be 
terrific  even  if  they  were  adequately  fed.  They  are  working 
ten  and  a  half  hours  on  two  days  of  the  week,  and  over 
eight  hours  on  the  other  days. 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  95 

amount  to.  Mr.  Keynes  suggests  a  total  of 
2,000,000,000  sterling,  less  £500,000,000  paid  al- 
ready in  kind.  This  would  mean,  with  out  interest, 
an  anual  sum  of  £50,000,000  for  thirty  years.  His 
estimate  of  what  -Germany  could  afford  to  pay  was 
■based,  however,  on  conditions  which  are  unlikely  to 
be  fulfilled.  He  assumed  her  restoration  to 
her  tights  as  a  trader  in  the  world's  market,  the 
sparing  of  her  big  and  profitable  enterprises  abroad, 
the  reduction  of  the  coal  tribute,  an  arrangement 
which  would  give  her  access  to  the  iron  ore  of  Lor- 
raine, the  creation  of  a  Central  European  Customs 
Union,  and  the  floating  of  a  great  international  loan 
to  stabilize  Germany's  currency  and  enable  her  to 
purchase  raw  material.  How  near  the  Allies  will 
yet  come,  to  these  conditions,  we  do  not  yet  know. 
Writing  without  that  knowledge  I  find  it  hard  to 
believe  that,  even  after  a  further  interval  of  two 
years,  Germany  will  be  able  to  pay  any  indemnity 
worth  counting  —  apart,  that  is  to  say,  from  some 
coal  tribute  and  the  indemnity  of  over  500,000,000 
sterling,  which  she  has  paid  already. 

The  available  data  make  it  clear  that  any  estimates 
of  her  future  capacity  to  pay  anything  whatever 
are  wildly  speculative,  and  gamble  on  the  chances 
of  a  brilliant  and  rapid  recovery,  of  which  there  is 
no  sign.  The  Budget  of  the  German  Reich  for  the 
present  year  shows  a  revenue  on  paper  (by  no  means 
likely  to  be  realized)  of  28  milliards  of  paper  marks. 


g6  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

The  taxation  is  mainly  direct,  and  includes  not 
merely  a  steeply-graded  income  tax  and  succession 
duty,  but  also  a  levy  on  war-wealth,  and  in  addi- 
tion a  general  levy  on  capital.  This  taxation  is 
hardly  capable  of  much  increase,  and  it  accounts  al- 
ready for  much  of  the  violent  discontent  of  the 
middle  and  upper  classes.  What  the  total  national 
income  of  Germany  may  be,  one  can  only  guess. 
Before  the  war,  in  1913,  it  was  43  milliard  marks. 
The  official  figures  for  19 18- 19,  on  which  Herr 
Erzberger  based  his  daring  Budget,  gave  48  mil- 
liards, including  both  taxed  and  untaxed  incomes, 
with  a  margin  for  concealment.  The  real  income 
may  not  have  risen  in  the  interval,  but  the  nominal 
income  probably  has  risen,  as  the  mark  has  fallen. 
On  a  rough  guess  it  is  possible  that  the  present  na- 
tional income  of  all  Germany  may  be  60  milliards  of 
paper  marks. ^  Of  this  half  is  taken  in  taxation 
( for  the  State  and  municipal  taxes  have  to  be  added 
to  those  of  the  Reich),  an  enormous  and  unparal- 
leled proportion.  With  all  this  taxation  the  Bud- 
get does  not  balance.  The  deficit  for  the  present 
year  was  estimated  by  the  finance  minister,  Dr. 
Wirth,  at  50  milliard  paper  marks.  Germany,  in 
plain  words,  is  bankrupt.  How,  from  a  de'ficit  like 
this,  the  Allies  can  obtain  their  minimum  yearly  in- 
demnity of  £150,000,000  in  gold   (equal  to  about 

1  The  mark  was  about  200  to  the  £1  when  this  was  written. 
It  has  since  risen. 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  97 

30  milliards  of  paper  marks)  is  a  puzzle  which  might 
have  engaged  the  promoters  of  Laputa.  An  indem- 
nity is  paid  in  the  last  resort  by  a  surplus  of  exports 
over  imports'.  The  German  trade  returns  for  the 
first  half  of  1920  are  far  from  showing  a  favorable 
trade-balance.  There  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  heavy 
deficit. 

Practical  men  have  long  ago  dismissed  the  Ger- 
man indemnity  as  a  vain  imagining  from  their 
thoughts.  If  the  Germans  can  pay  nothing,  they 
incline  to  say,  then  we  shall  gain  nothing,  but  neither 
will  they  lose.  That  is  much  too  simple  a  view. 
They  have  paid  something  —  the  tools,  in  the  shape 
of  ships  and  locomotives,  with  which  they  might 
have  recovered  their  productivity.  They  will  con- 
tinue to  pay  something  —  the  coal  which  might  have 
driven  their  idle  mills.  Worst  of  all,  the  attempt  to 
extort  an  impossible  and  unjustifiable  indemnity  will 
have  its  disturbing  effects,  political,  psychological 
and  economic,  upon  the  whole  life  of  Germany  and 
of  Europe.  It  may  break  the  springs  of  enterprise 
and  work  in  Germany  itself.  Men  are  not  bees, 
who  will  continue  to  labor  when  all  the  honey  is 
taken  from  the  hive.  Above  all,  the  attempts  to 
extort  this  tribute  by  threats  of  coercion  will  make 
French  militarism  the  shaping  force  in  the  politics 
of  Europe.  Step  by  step,  first  in  our  relation  with 
Germany  and  eventually  in  our  relation  with  Russia, 
we  shall  become  the  armed  bailiffs  of  Europe,  stand- 


98  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

ing  with  our  weapons  in  our  hands,  to  exact  a  debt, 
repugnant  to  conscience  and  common  sense,  from 
two  hundred  milHons  of  civilized  men. 

The  indemnity  is  the  form  which  this  tribute  takes 
in  the  case  of  Germany.  Against  Russia,  France 
cherishes  relentlessly  her  claim  for  the  repayment 
and  recognition  of  the  gigantic  public  debt  af  Tsarist 
Russia,  which  the  revolution  repudiated,  and  to  that 
must  be  added  the  colossal  indemnities  due  to  for- 
eign companies  which  owned  factories,  iron-works, 
oil-wells  and  mining  concessions.  These  claims  are 
all  doubtless  good  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  but  even 
at  law  the  Russian  Republic  might  build  up  a  formid- 
able counter  claim.  Our  breach  of  neutrality  in 
the  American  Civil  War,  when  by  mere  negligence 
we  allowed  the  armed  cruiser  Alabama  to  sail  from 
the  Mersey  in  the  service  of  the  South,  cost  us,  when 
the  case  went  to  arbitration,  a  fine  to  the  victorious 
North  of  three  and  a  quarter  millions  sterling.  At 
what  sum  would  a  neutral  Court  assess  the  fines 
and  damages  due  from  us,  and  from  most  of  the 
Allies,  for  our  open  and  deliberate  breaches  of  neu- 
trality, by  blockade,  bombardments,  military  expe- 
ditions, supplies  of  munitions  and  direct  subsidies 
given  to  the  defeated  party  in  the  Russian  Civil 
War?  Set  on  one  page  of  the  ledger  the  losses  of 
investors  and  bond-holders,  and  on  the  other  the 
agony  and   impoverishment,   the   disease   and   the 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  99 

Slaughter  due  to  our  blockade  and  our  intervention, 
and  we  may  doubt  whether  the  reckoning  would 
show  a  balance  in  favor  of  the  Allies.  By  the  pur- 
suit of  one  claim  or  another,  Western  capitalism  is 
placing  itself  in  a  relation  of  creditor,  rent-receiver, 
and  tribute-taker  towards  the  two  impoverished  Re- 
publics of  Germany  and  Russia.  These  two  hun- 
dred millions  of  men  will  be  made  to  feel  that  they 
are  the  debt-slaves  of  the  eighty-five  millions  of  the 
two  Western  Allies.  Eventually  they  may  come 
together  and  eventually  they  may  revolt.  These 
claims  for  debts  and  indemnities  are  a  terrific  charge 
of  political  dynamite  under  the  flimsy  international 
structure  of  Europe. 

EXPLOITATION 

The  annexation  of  valuable  territory,  the  levying 
of  a  coal  tribute,  the  destruction  of  German  world- 
trade  and  the  imposition  of  an  indemnity,  are  not 
the  only  methods  by  which  the  victorious  powers 
have  sought  their  own  economic  advantage  at  the 
expense  of  the  vanquished.  Rather  tardily,  a  more 
intimate  process  of  direct  exploitation  is  commend- 
ing itself  to  some  financial  groups  in  the  Allied  coun- 
tries. When  a  backward  country  beyond  the  con- 
fines of  Europe  is  conquered,  we  know  what  to  ex- 
pect. The  capital  of  the  victorious  power  will  go 
there  to  "  open  up  "  the  country.     It  will  carry  out 


lOO  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

engineering  works,  develop  the  raw  materials,  and 
start  industries,  if  the  local  labor  is  abundant  and 
tractable,  and  in  all  these  undertakings  it  will  profit 
by  the  difference  in  the  standard  of  life  between 
Western  and  Eastern  labor.  A  curiously  similar 
process  is  now  going  on  in  Central  Europe.  These 
countries  are  ruined,  and  yet  they  still  possess  im- 
mense assets.  The  factories  may  stand  idle,  but 
they  are  well  equipped.  The  workers  may  be  unem- 
ployed and  half-starved,  but  they  retain  their  tech- 
nical skill,  their  manual  deftness,  their  high  level  of 
education.  There  are  severe  limits  to  the  gains  to 
be  won  from  exploiting  coolie  labor.  The  Asiatic 
factory  hand  may  be  content  with  a  ridiculous  wage, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  can  mind  only  one  ma- 
chine (it  even  takes  two  Chinese  weavers  to  mind 
one  loom),  where  a  Lancashire  weaver  can  watch 
four,  or  even  six.  The  fall  of  the  Central  Euro- 
pean exchanges  made  available  a  supply  of  labor 
hardly  dearer  than  that  of  coolies,  but  in  industry, 
education  and  skill  as  good  as  the  best  at  home. 
In  a  privately  circulated  Memorandum  sent  out  to 
English  financiers  in  the  hope  of  interesting  them  in 
a  syndicate  formed  to  do  business  in  Austria,  the 
statement  was  made  that,  measured  in  Kronen,  the 
labor  of  a  skilled  metal-worker  costs  in  Austria  700- 
800  Kronen  a  week,  while  the  same  degree  of  skill 
will  fetch  the  equivalent  of  5000  Kronen  in  Eng- 
land and  12,000  in  the  United  States.     As  the  De- 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  loi 

partment  of  Overseas  Trade  states  in  its  official 
publication/  the  wages  of  this  high-grade  labor  are 
in  Austria  only  2d.  an  hour.  Add  to  this  the  fact 
that  going  concerns  can  be  bought  with  the  exchange 
fantastically  in  our  favor,  for  the  Krone  stands  now 
at  1,500,  instead  of  the  normal  25  to  the  pound. 
The  meaner  sort  of  speculators  settled  like  ghouls  on 
the  prostrate  bodies  of  Germany  and  Austria  im- 
mediately after  the  armistice,  and  bought  up  jew- 
ellery, furs,  art  treasures,  and  such  remnants 
of  exportable  stocks  as  they  could  find,  on  the 
basis  of  this  exchange.  They  were  followed  by 
more  serious  financiers,  at  first  chiefly  French 
and  'Italian,  who  acquired  the  hotels  and  the 
bigger  restaurants,  and  began  to  "  penetrate "  the 
banks.  The  one  big  steel  works  in  Austria  went 
to  an  Italian  syndicate ;  France  is  said  to  be  in  treaty 
to  acquire  the  Hungarian  State  Railways.  A  Brit- 
ish trust  is  acquiring  the  steamship  trade  of  the  Dan- 
ube. Several  American  firms  have  made  their  ap- 
pearance in  Vienna  with  an  eye  apparently  on  the 
textile  factories  of  Austria.  This  foreign  capital 
claims  the  same  favored  position  in  the  eye  of  the 
law  to  which  it  is  accustomed  in  Turkey  and  other 
Oriental  countries.  It  will  be  exempted  from  the 
Austrian  capital  levy,  and  some  American  firms  are 
said  to  have  asked  (I  do  not  know  with  what  suc- 

1 "  Economic  Survey  of  Certain  Countries  Specially  Affected 
by  the  War,"  p.  52. 


I02  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

cess)  for  exemption  from  the  law  which  sets  up  an 
elected  Works  Council  in  every  factory.  In  Ger- 
many the  process  goes  more  slowly  and  encounters 
some  patriotic  resistance,  but  none  the  less  one  usu- 
ally finds  in  any  German  newspaper  opened  at  ran- 
dom some  item  of  news  which  reports  the  penetra- 
tion of  American,  Dutch  or  British  capital  in  some 
textile,  or  electrical  or  banking  concern.  As  yet 
the  more  usual  form  of  this  foreign  participation  is 
on  the  commission  basis.  The  foreign  financier  sup- 
plies raw  materials  to  the  German  or  Austrian  fac- 
tory, and  receives  them  back  as  finished  products, 
less  a  percentage  which  covers  the  labor  costs  and 
the  manufacturers'  profit.  As  the  labor  and  the 
manufacturers'  charges  are  paid  in  marks  and 
Kronen,  while  the  product  is  sold  for  pounds  or  dol- 
lars, it  will  be  obvious  that  these  commission  trans- 
actions may  be  very  profitable. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  speak  harshly  of  these 
ventures.  They  are  welcomed  by  Viennese  opin- 
ion. They  are  bringing  work  to  a  desperate  and  un- 
employed population,  and  that  is  an  inestimable  gain, 
even  though  the  foreign  capitalist  is  hiring  labor  at 
a  price  below  the  world  level  of  bare  subsistence. 
But  for  these  easily-criticized  transactions  the  tragic 
children  of  Vienna  would  be  even  nearer  to  naked- 
ness and  starvation  than  they  are  to-day.  It  is 
probable,  also,  that  some  of  the  financiers  who  are 
leading  these  enterprises  are  acting  under  a  genu- 


AN  ECHO  OF  MALTHUS  103 

inely  philanthropic  motive.  None  the  less,  the  whole 
process,  which  no  single  brain  has  consciously 
planned,  reveals  the  subconscious  working  of  a  cap- 
italist statecraft  in  its  fatal  logic  of  exploitation. 
First,  by  the  unduly  protracted  blockade,  and  then 
by  the  merciless  peace,  these  countries  are  ruined 
and  dismembered.  The  exchange  reflects  the  hope- 
lessness of  their  future.  Comes  a  moment  when 
influential  voices  are  raised  to  implore  American 
support  for  an  international  loan  to  enable  them 
to  restore  their  currency  and  purchase  raw  materials 
on  their  own  account.  The  answer  comes  back  that 
their  restoration  must  be  left  to  **  private  initiative." 
It  steps  in,  buys  up  what  Allied  policy  has  cheap- 
ened, and  thrives  upon  the  ruin.  The  Good  Samar- 
itan is  at  work.  He  pours  in  oil  and  wine  at  a  profit. 
One  might  suspect  him  of  collusion  with  the  other 
persons  in  the  parable. 

It  is  hard  to  say  how  far  this  "  penetration  "  of 
Central  Europe  is  destined  to  go.  The  dislocation 
of  transport,  the  wild  and  sudden  variations  of  the 
exchange,  and  the  risk  of  revolution  seem  to  hold 
it  in  check  at  present.  There  are  observers  in 
Vienna  and  Berlin  who  believe  that  all  Central  Eu- 
rope will  become  economically  an  Allied  "  colony," 
in  the  sense  that  India  is  "  run  "  by  British  capital. 
At  least  the  beginnings  are  apparent,  which  might 
lead  in  the  Danubian  States,  at  any  rate,  to  that 
result.     If  that  should  happen,  two  curiously  con- 


104  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

trary  consequences  may  follow.  In  the  first  place, 
this  capitalist  influence,  gradually  acquiring  a  big 
stake  in  Central  Europe,  may  begin  to  counteract 
the  cruder  and  more  oppressive  influences  at  home, 
and  to  plead  for  a  milder  treatment  of  the  van- 
quished. Secondly,  as  the  native  capitalist  class 
finds  itself  elbowed  out  by  foreigners,  it  may,  from 
its  own  national  standpoint,  incline  to  make  com- 
mon cause  with  the  working  class  in  a  social  revolt 
against  capitalist  exploitation,  all  the  more  odious 
because  it  is  foreign.  These  are  remote  specula- 
tions. The  fact  is  that  victorious  capital  is  begin- 
ning in  some  degree  to  apply  its  familiar  colonial 
technique.  A  foreign  element  has  been  thrust  into 
the  economic  life  of  Central  Europe,  and  the  reac- 
tions, political  and  social,  may  be  unpredictably  com- 
plex. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT? 

Defeat  and  a  dictated  peace  impose  passivity  on 
the  vanquished  population.  To  attempt  any  action 
to  better  its  own  lot  is  at  once  impossible  and  inex- 
pedient. The  shock  of  defeat  paralyzes  for  a  time; 
the  means  of  action,  whether  military  or  economic, 
are  lacking,  and  prudence  suggests  that  any  move- 
ment may  excite  the  suspicion  of  the  conquerors. 
This  phase  of  passivity,  however,  will  give  way  to 
action  as  the  months  and  years  go  by.  No  white 
people  will  acquiesce  in  a  sentence  of  helotry,  and 
if  it  feels  that  the  political  and  economic  conditions 
imposed  upon  it  are  fatal  to  its  progress,  to  the 
maintenance  of  its  former  level  of  civilization,  or 
even  to  its  survival,  it  will  attempt,  or  sections  of  it 
will  attempt,  to  grapple  with  its  fate.  The  more 
intolerable  these  conditions  are,  the  more  reckless 
will  be  its  movement  of  protest.  It  may  be  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  a  renewal  of  war  on  the  scale  and  in 
the  style  of  the  struggle  which  ended  in  1918,  but 
revolution  is  possible,  and  in  the  condition  of  semi- 
disarmament  and  political  fluidity  which  is  that  of  all 
Central  Europe,  even  small  forces  of  armed  men 

105 


io6  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

imperfectly  equipped  for  regular  warfare  may  pro- 
duce a  disturbing  effect.  If  it  is  true  that  the  van- 
quished are  in  no  position  to  place  in  the  field  mil- 
lions of  conscripts,  it  is  also  true  that  the  victors  are 
in  no  condition  to  mobilize  again.  What  a  semi- 
regular  army  of  Turks  does  to-day  in  Asia  to  defy 
the  Peace  Treaty,  might  be  attempted,  first,  perhaps, 
by  the  Hungarians,  in  Europe  to-morrow.  Men 
will  not  lie  down  passively  to  die,  and  the  lack  of 
bread  is  a  spur  which  will  always  prompt  virile 
races  to  desperate  action.  As  the  original  stocks 
which  peopled  our  Continent  in  the  dark  ages  by 
their  wanderings  in  search  of  corn-lands  and  pasture 
battled  under  the  stress  of  need,  so  men  may  break 
out  from  this  over-populated  pen  fold  of  Central 
Europe  in  search  of  the  modern  necessities,  coal  and 
iron  ore.  The  wars  of  the  immediate  future  will 
be  hunger-wars.  What  else  was  the  struggle  be- 
tween starving  Poland  and  starving  Russia  for  the 
rich  corn-lands  of  the  Ukraine? 

There  are,  speaking  broadly,  three  paths  among 
which  the  defeated  peoples  may  choose  a  road  from 
their  present  miseries :  First,  social  revolution,  im- 
plying an  alliance  with  Russia ;  then  social  reaction, 
with  its  implications  of  militarism  and  an  eventual 
war  of  revanche;  and  thirdly,  as  a  middle  course, 
liberal  or  semi-Socialist  democracy  with  a  program 
of  peaceful  reconstruction  and  hard  work.  Though 
it  is  the  tendencies  towards  one  of  these  extremes 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      107 

which  have  attracted  most  attention,  one  should  not 
forget  that  in  Germany,  in  Austria,  and  even  for  a 
itw  months  in  Hungary,  it  was  the  middle  road 
which  the  majority  trod.  The  prevalent  current  of 
thought  was  liberal.  Each  of  these  three  States  be- 
came a  .Republic,  and  both  Germany  and  Austria 
adopted  an  elaborately  perfect  democratic  constitu- 
tion, with  all  the  latest  improvements  in  the  shape 
of  women's  suffrage  and  proportional  representa- 
tion. The  ideology  of  the  League  of  Nations  was 
fashionable.  The  governing  Coalition  sought  a 
solution  of  social  problems  by  various  Socialistic 
compromises.  Elected  Works  Councils  were  set  up 
on  a  statutory  plan.  The  eight-hour  day  was  en- 
forced. Plans  were  considered  and  promises  given 
to  socialize  coal-mines.  The  adoption  of  republican 
democracy  had  been  all  but  dictated  to  Germany  by 
President  Wilson  in  the  exchange  of  telegrams  which 
led  up  to  the  armistice.  It  was  understood,  and  in- 
deed in  some  speeches  both  Mr.  Wilson  and  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  had  plainly  said,  that  a  "  democratic  " 
Germany  might  hope  for  better  terms  than  a  defiant 
"  autocracy."  These  promises  were  shamelessly 
broken.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  treat  the 
Hohenzollerns  and  the  Hapsburgs  more  harshly  than 
the  three  democratic  republics  were  treated  which 
had  hurled  them  from  their  thrones.  The  result  was 
that  the  middle  course  fell  into  discredit.  Men 
ceased   to   believe   that   democracy,   peace,   gradual 


io8  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

social  reconstruction,  high  taxation  and  hard  work 
would  lead  to  a  tolerable  existence,  Hungary  was 
the  first  to  throw  over  the  democratic  parliamentary 
regime  adopted  under  Count  Karolyi.  She  has 
passed,  through  a  brief  period  of  communism,  into 
a  violent  "  white "  reaction,  monarchist,  clerical, 
anti-Semitic  and  militarist.  Central  Europe  learned, 
moreover,  even  before  the  peace  was  signed,  that 
the  Allies  are  not  all  of  Mr.  Wilson's  way  of  think- 
ing in  preferring  to  deal  with  democratic  Republics. 
"  White  "  Hungary  under  Admiral  Horthy  had  bet- 
ter treatment  from  the  Allies  in  general  and  from 
Britain  in  particular,  than  Republican  Hungary  had 
enjoyed  under  Count  Karolyi,  though  no  one  could 
doubt  the  sincerity  of  his  pacifism,  his  advanced 
liberalism,  and  his  opposition  to  Prussianism  during 
the  war.  It  is,  moreover,  the  general  belief  that 
French  diplomacy  favors  the  restoration  of  mon- 
archy in  Central  Europe  either  under  a  Hapsburg 
in  Vienna  or  under  a  Wittelsbach  in  Munich.  The 
second  general  election  in  Germany  measured  the 
change  which  a  year's  experience  of  peace  with  semi- 
starvation  had  brought  about.  The  moderate  Coal- 
ition, which  had  Liberalism  and  the  golden  mean 
for  its  program,  lost  its  majority.  The  revolution- 
ary Socialist  "  Left "  quadrupled  its  representation. 
The  two  reactionary  parties  of  the  "  Right,"  which 
had  polled  together  only  15  per  cent,  in  the  former 
election,  doubled  their  numbers  in  the  Reichstag. 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      109 

This  vote  meant  that,  aHke  for  the  middle  class  and 
for  the  working  class,  life  was  rapidly  becoming  un- 
endurable, and  each  sought  the  way  of  escape  in 
violent  change.  The  moderates,  from  the  Majority 
Socialists  to  the  Catholic  Center,  are  still  just  short 
of  being  half  the  population,  but  they  have  lost  con- 
fidence, faith  and  prestige.  It  is  from  timidity,  or 
habit,  and  no  longer  from  hopeful  conviction,  that 
they  adhere  to  the  golden  mean. 

THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION 

Is  social  revolution  then  still  a  probable,  or  even 
a  possible  outcome  of  this  desperate  condition  in 
Central  Europe?  Before  the  war  very  few  of  us 
believed  in  its  possibility.  Events  in  Russia,  in 
Hungary  and  in  Munich  have  shattered  that  skepti- 
cism. It  is  a  possibility  under  certain  conditions, 
and  the  business  of  an  analytic  student  of  contem- 
porary tendencies  is  to  discover  whether  all  these 
actual  conditions  were  essential,  and  whether  they 
may  recur. 

The  study  is  inordinately  complex,  for  psycho- 
logical considerations  cross  the  economic  factors  in 
the  most  baffling  way,  and  one  has  to  consider  not 
merely  the  strength  of  the  positive  forces  which 
make  for  revolution,  but  also  that  of  the  negative 
forces  which  resist  it.  The  economic  misery  in 
Poland,  for  example,  was  much  worse  throughout 
19 1 9  than  that  of  Hungary,     In  both  countries  the 


no  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

larger  part  of  the  population  was  under  the  influence 
of  Catholic  and  conservative  habits  of  thought.  In 
Poland,  a  revolution  seemed  unthinkable,  because,  in 
spite  of  poverty,  bankruptcy,  hunger,  unemployment 
and  typhus,  the  general  mood  was  one  of  elation 
and  hope.  The  Polish  nation  had  risen  from  the 
grave :  it  reckoned  itself  one  of  the  world's  victors : 
it  believed  that  a  brilliant  future  of  glory,  expansion 
and  power  lay  before  it.  It  contrasted  the  gloomy 
past  with  the  dazzling  era  to  come,  and  felt  able  to 
endure  the  uncomfortable  present.  In  Hungary,  on 
the  contrary,  as  in  all  the  defeated  countries,  a  glori- 
ous and  satisfying  past  had  been  suddenly  shattered. 
Gone  were  all  megalomanias  of  Empire  and  patri- 
otism, the  illusions  of  national  grandeur  which  had 
helped  to  sustain  the  old  fabric  of  a  half-capitalist, 
half-feudal  system.  There  is  much  truth  in  the 
epigram  attributed  to  Marshal  Foch,  that  "Bolshe- 
vism is  a  disease  of  the  vanquished,"  but  plainly  it 
has  lost  a  little  of  its  truth  with  each  week  that  has 
followed  the  victory.  Disillusion  has  come  promptly 
to  Italy,  and  it  may  follow  elsewhere. 

The  second  of  the  conditions  which  made  revolu- 
tion possible  was  the  disappearance  or  the  disaffec- 
tion of  the  army.  The  demoralization  of  the  Rus- 
sian army  had  begun  long  before  the  first  revolution, 
and  men  were  deserting  in  hundreds  of  thousands 
while  the  Tsar  still  reigned.  By  the  time  the  Bolshe- 
viks made  their  coup  d'etat,  the  army  had  become 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?   in 

useless  whether  for  offense  or  defense  or  for  police. 
In  Hungary  as  in  Germany  the  demobilization  had 
been  so  rapid  that  it  resembled  a  dispersal  after  de- 
feat. There  remained  no  organized  force  during 
the  winter  of  1918-1919  on  which  a  moderate  Gov- 
ernment could  count  to  resist  revolution.  This  was, 
as  we  shall  see,  in  both  countries,  a  temporary  con- 
dition, but  it  was  indispensable  to  the  success  of  a 
violent  revolution.  The  belief  current  before  this 
war,  that  the  superior  armament  of  modern  armies 
had  made  revolution  obsolete,  was  true  in  the  main. 
But  defeat,  when  the  soldiers  believe  that  the  disas- 
ter is  the  fault  of  their  own  ruling  class,  may  turn 
conscript  armies  into  an  instrument  of  revolution. 
The  positive  aid  of  part  of  the  army  in  the  capital 
was  a  factor  in  the  overthrow  of  the  Kaiser  and  the 
Tsar.  The  fact  that  no  trustworthy  troops  could 
be  collected  in  time  to  resist  the  dictatorship  of  the 
proletariat  was  essential  to  the  success  of  Lenin  and 
of  Bela  Kun.  Neither  of  them,  in  the  early  days 
when  they  made  their  stroke,  could  have  collected 
"  red  guards  "  enough  to  deal  with  even  one  division 
of  disciplined,  reliable,  regular  troops  under  resolute 
commanders. 

The  moving  cause  of  revolution,  which  attained  its 
result,  amid  the  collapse  of  the  "  bourgeois  "  ideol- 
ogy, and  in  the  absence  of  armed  resistance,  was, 
of  course,  the  economic  misery  of  the  proletariat. 
The  revolution  was  the  direct  outcome  of  the  bread 


112  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

queue.  One  must  note,  moreover,  that  in  both  Rus- 
sia and  Hungary  this  economic  misery  had  come  to 
the  most  active  part  of  the  proletariat  somewhat  sud- 
denly. The  war,  with  all  its  dangers  and  hardships, 
had  none  the  less  accustomed  the  young  men  of  the 
laboring  and  poorer  artisan  and  peasant  classes  to  a 
standard  of  living  decidedly  better  than  their  own. 
They  ate  meat  daily  and  were  not  only  well  fed  but 
well  clad.  They  quitted  the  army  to  share  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  civil  population  under  the  blockade. 
With  the  sudden  closing  of  the  munition  factories 
half  Budapest  (one  may  say  even  half  Central  Eu- 
rope) was  unemployed,  and  it  lived  on  doles,  which 
lost  a  little  of  their  purchasing  power  each  day,  as 
the  blockade  was  tightened  after  the  armistice. 
The  miseries  of  the  housing  problem  counted  for 
more  than  any  other  single  factor  in  Budapest,  and 
they  everywhere  played  their  part.  The  housing 
conditions  in  Budapest  were  always  execrable,  and 
owing  to  the  influx  first  of  munition  workers  dur- 
ing the  war,  and  then  of  Magyar  and  Jewish  ref- 
ugees from  the  ceded  territories  after  the  armistice, 
the  normal  population  of  the  city  was  doubled. 
People  were  sleeping  in  the  slums  twenty  and  even 
thirty  to  a  room. 

The  war  had  in  many  other  ways  fostered  revo- 
lution. Conscription  tended  everywhere,  even  in 
England,  to  break  up  small  businesses  and  to  close 
little  shops,  whose  proprietors  were  drawn  into  the 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       113 

army.  On  the  Continent  much  less  care  was  taken 
to  spare  these  small  interests.  These  middle-class 
men  found  themselves  on  demobilization  without 
businesses,  without  prospects  and  often  without 
homes.  The  parallel  fact  was  an  acceleration  of  the 
normal  tendency  to  the  accumulation  of  capital  in 
big  businesses,  and  the  spectacle  of  the  insolent 
wealth  of  these  war-profiteers  worked  in  a  provoca- 
tive way  upon  the  minds  of  men  already  disturbed 
by  the  loss  of  their  old  standards  of  comfort. 
Again,  the  intellectual  workers,  from  the  doctors  to 
the  clerks,  had  suffered  relatively  much  more  than 
the  manual  workers  from  the  depreciation  of  the 
currency.  They  could  no  longer  clothe,  feed  or  edu- 
cate their  children  as  the  standards  of  their  class 
required.  Many  of  them  were  in  pitiable  want,  and 
all  of  them  felt  themselves  sinking  to  a  proletarian 
level.  They  went  over  in  shoals  to  the  Socialists, 
and  in  Berlin  the  bank-clerks  even  conducted  a  strike 
for  the  right  to  join  the  Workmen's  Council.  Men 
who  feel  that  their  savings  have  become  worthless, 
that  the  money  in  their  pockets  has  lost  its  purchas- 
ing power,  men  who  own  only  the  one  suit  of  clothes 
on  their  backs,  and  see  their  children  going  about 
in  patched  and  threadbare  dresses,  are  not  likely 
to  bring  out  their  rifles  for  the  defense  of  the  old 
order  of  society.  The  working  of  these  economic 
and  psychological  causes  of  revolution  was  enhanced 
by  the  mental  condition  of  the  peoples  whose  ner- 


114  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

vous  system  had  been  starved  by  years  of  underfeed- 
ing. Thinking  was  feverish  and  active.  Disaster 
had  made  a  vacuum  in  men's  minds,  and  in  their 
overv^rought  condition  only  a  violent  stimulus,  a 
call  to  action  on  a  grandiose  scale,  a  promise  of  a 
new  world,  could  have  moved  them.  The  hope  of 
communism  came  to  a  neurotic  society,  bankrupt  in 
everything  but  this  last  speculative  hope. 

Some  of  these  conditions  which  explain  the  revo- 
lution in  defeated  Russia,  Hungary  and  Bavaria  are 
still  general  throughout  Central  Europe.  There  is 
no  improvement  in  the  economic  conditions.  There 
is  no  alternative  hope,  unless  it  be  a  militarist  reac- 
tion. None  the  less,  there  have  been  changes  of  a 
very  far-reaching  kind,  which  may  make  further 
successful  revolutions  improbable.  In  the  first 
place,  when  one  lays  stress  upon  economic  misery, 
and  in  particular  upon  the  lowering  of  high  stand- 
ards of  living,  as  a  cause  of  revolution,  one  implies 
that  a  social  revolution  promises  a  comparatively 
rapid  improvement,  at  all  events  for  the  industrial 
proletariat.  A  people  may  make  a  revolution  in 
sheer  despair,  even  if  it  has  no  certainty  of  an  early 
improvement  in  its  lot,  provided  that  it  acts  promptly 
in  the  first  hour  of  its  crisis.  Delay  brings  reflec- 
tion, and  the  experience  gained  in  the  interval  may 
have  brought  the  knowledge  that  the  dictatorship  of 
the  proletariat  cannot  promise  any  early  improve- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       115 

ment  in  its  material  conditions.  Whether  a  Com- 
munist State,  if  it  were  brilHantly  organized  and 
could  command  internal  supplies  of  food  and  raw 
materials,  could  raise  the  productivity  of  industry 
up  to,  or  above  the  capitalist  level,  remains  a  specu- 
lative question.  No  clean  scientific  test  of  this  all- 
important  question  has  been  allowed.  A  great  part, 
perhaps  the  major  part,  of  the  disorganization  and 
suffering  which  Russia  and  Hungary  have  under- 
gone, must  be  attributed  to  war,  civil  war  and  the 
blockade.  Friends  may  assert,  opponents  may  deny 
that  Lenin  and  Bela  Kun  could  have  raised  the  level 
of  comfort  of  the  town  workers,  if  the  Soviets  had 
enjoyed  peace,  and  had  been  permitted  to  trade 
abroad.  Neither  opinion  can  be  demonstrated  con- 
clusively. The  fact  remains,  however,  even  if  one 
puts  the  chief  blame  on  civil  war  and  the  blockade, 
that  such  accidents  are  to  be  expected  when  one 
makes  a  revolution.  Socialists  in  Germany  ex- 
pected that  if  they  followed  the  Russian  example, 
the  British  blockade  would  be  applied  to  them  also. 
Vienna,  though  it  had  better  reasons  for  desperate 
action  than  any  other  city,  knew  very  well  that 
revolution  would  involve  the  total  stoppage  of  its 
imported  food  supply.  Agitators  may  promise  that 
revolution  means  sudden  betterment,  but  serious 
thinkers  who  believe  in  the  Dictatorship  postpone 
their  hopes  to  a  rather  more  distant  date.     One  can 


Ji6  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

get  little  more  than  luxury  goods  by  expropriating 
the  possessions  of  the  rich.  Even  their  dwellings 
cannot  be  converted  easily  and  rapidly  into  homes 
for  the  working-class,  if  building  materials  and  fur- 
niture are  short.  The  old  revolutionary  school 
hoped  for  revolution  in  a  crisis  of  over-production 
and  unemployment.  Then  there  would  have  been 
surplus  goods  to  distribute,  and  the  machinery  of 
production  would  have  been  intact.  If  one  makes  a 
revolution  after  war,  there  is  no  surplus  of  goods 
nor  is  industry  intact,  and  yet  it  is  only  after  war, 
and  then  only  after  defeat,  that  a  revolution  seems 
to  be  feasible  as  a  military  undertaking.  If  a  revo- 
lution follows  a  prolonged  social  conflict,  marked 
by  constant  strikes,  sabotage  and  the  tactics  of  *'  ca' 
canny,"  the  workers  will  have  lost  their  productive 
discipline,  and  both  in  .Russia  and  in  Hungary  it 
has  been  found  difficult  to  restore  it.  Shock  tactics 
may  upset  the  power  of  a  capitalist  class,  but  they 
do  not  uproot  the  capitalist  mentality,  the  inculcated 
habits  which  respond  to  gain  as  the  only  adequate 
stimulus  to  effort.  The  Socialist  State,  when  it 
seems  to  have  won  its  battle  by  a  sudden  revolution, 
Is  really  only  at  the  beginning  of  its  struggle  with 
the  surviving  mind  of  the  capitalist  order.  Even 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions,  if  it  escaped 
war,  civil  war  and  the  blockade,  some  years  might 
pass  before  it  could  hope  to  organize  production  so 
successfully  as  to  raise  the  town-workers'  standard 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       117 

of  life.  In  an  able  and  objective  book/  written 
after  his  experiences  as  Chief  Commissioner  for  Pro- 
duction in  the  Hungarian  Soviet  Republic,  Dr.  Eu- 
gen  Varga  (a  former  University  Professor)  de- 
clares very  frankly  that  the  summons  to  revolution 
is,  even  for  the  industrial  workers,  a  call  to  self- 
sacrifice.  One  is  reminded  of  a  religious  summons 
to  a  difficult  life  of  abnegation. 


TOWN   AND   COUNTRY 

One  may  invent  many  reasons  to  explain  after 
the  fact,  what  none  of  us  would  have  predicted,  the 
success  of  the  Social  Revolution  in  Russia,  and  as 
yet  in  Russia  alone.  Nowhere  in  Europe  does  the 
industrial  proletariat  form  so  small  a  percentage  of 
the  population,  yet  this  industrial  proletariat  alone 
made,  and  in  spite  of  dwindling  numbers,  still  sus- 
tains the  revolution.  Some  partial  explanations  are 
possible;  one  may  dwell  on  the  numerical  weakness 
of  the  Russian  middle  class,  and  its  political  imma- 
turity. One  may  point  out  that  Russia  had  escaped 
those  formative  centuries  from  the  Reformation 
downwards,  which  in  Western  Europe  have  made 
of  the  "  bourgeois"  Liberal  tradition  an  ingrained 
mode  of  thought,  from  which  even  Socialist  work- 

1  Die    wirtschaftspolitischen    Probleme    der    proletarischen 
Diktatur.    Wien,  1920. 


ii8  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

men  can  hardly  free  themselves.  Again,  given  the 
evident  incapacity,  as  leaders  in  a  time  of  stress,  of 
the  moderates  of  Kerensky's  school,  there  seems  to 
be  in  .Russia  only  two  real  alternatives  —  Bolshevism 
or  Tsardom,  Any  "white"  counter-revolution  led 
by  the  soldiers,  officials  and  landowners  of  the  old 
regime,  will  infallibly  attempt  to  restore  the  old  land- 
owning system,  or  will  at  least  be  suspected  of  in- 
tending to  restore  it.  But  perhaps  the  chief  reason 
why  revolution  was  possible  in  Russia,  in  Hungary, 
and  even  for  a  moment  in  Bavaria,  is  that  these 
countries  alone  among  all  defeated  nations  in  Cen- 
tral Europe  are  capable  of  feeding  themselves. 
When  once  the  revolution  was  achieved,  however, 
experience  showed  the  inordinate  difficulty  of  deal- 
ing with  a  backward  peasantry,  and  until  Russia 
has  overcome  that  difficulty,  one  cannot  say  with 
certainty  that  the  revolution  is  stable,  even  there. 

The  war  and  the  blockade  began  a  transforma- 
tion in  the  relation  of  town  and  country  all  over 
Central  and  Eastern  Europe,  which  has  deeply  af- 
fected its  political  history  already,  and  may  be  the 
determining  factor  in  its  future.  H  we  had  been 
asked,  before  the  war,  to  define  the  normal  economic 
relation  of  country  and  town,  most  of  us  would  have 
answered  that  it  is  an  ordinary  relation  of  exchange. 
The  country  produces  food  and  sells  it  to  the  town 
in  exchange  for  manufactured  goods.  It  was  in 
reality  much  more  complex  than  this  simple  state- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       119 

merit  suggests.  The  country  really  existed  in  a 
tributary  relation  to  the  town.  Farmers  and  peas- 
ants paid  rent,  interest  on  mortgages  and  national 
taxes,  and  however  the  payment  was  disguised,  the 
concrete  fact  is  that  they  paid  these  obligations  ulti- 
mately in  kind.  Rent,  interest  and  taxes  really  went, 
through  one  channel  or  another,  in  the  form  of  grain, 
meat  and  vegetables  to  the  town.  The  relationship 
closely  resembled  that  between  an  industrial  country 
(say  England)  and  an  agrarian  country  (say  Argen- 
tina). Argentina  pays  to  England  in  grain  and  meat 
not  merely  the  equivalent  for  the  manufactured 
goods  which  we  send  out  in  any  one  season,  but  also 
a  rent  for  the  capital  which  our  finance  has  sunk 
there.  So  in  the  case  of  town  and  country.  An 
analysis  of  the  values  exchanged  between  a  city  and 
its  rural  districts  would  show,  if  statistical  measure- 
ment were  possible,  that  the  city  received  much  more 
than  it  gave  out.  It  received,  firstly,  the  food  equiv- 
alent in  barter  of  the  clothing,  furniture  and  tools 
which  the  farmers  and  peasants  actually  consumed, 
and,  secondly,  the  food  which  covered  rent,  interest 
on  loans,  taxes,  lawyers'  fees,  higher  education,  and 
many  similar  services  performed  by  the  town  and 
the  Central  State  machinery. 

The  war  and  the  blockade  began  to  alter  this  bal- 
ance. Food  became  scarce  and  dear,  and  even  the 
sharp  control  and  the  fixing  of  maximum  prices 
could  not  prevent  the  farmers  and  peasants  from 


120  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

"  profiteering."  They  grew  rich  out  of  scarcity, 
and  accumulated  money.  At  the  same  time  rents, 
taxation,  interests  on  mortgages  and  even  the  cost 
of  the  town's  professional  services  remained  nom- 
inally at  or  near  the  old  figure.  There  was  in  Cen- 
tral Europe  no  attempt  to  pay  for  the  war  by  taxa- 
tion, and  of  course  pre-war  loans  and  rents  remained 
at  the  old  level.  In  reality,  as  the  currency  depre- 
ciated, they  fell  to  a  merely  nominal  figure.  Every- 
where farmers  and  peasants  began  to  pay  off  mort- 
gages, or  to  buy  their  land.  The  result  was  that 
the  regular  tribute  paid  by  the  country  to  the  town 
nearly  disappeared.  In  part  it  was  wiped  out.  In 
part  it  was  still  exacted,  but  in  marks  or  Kronen, 
or  roubles,  which  had  sunk  to  a  fraction  of  their 
former  value.  The  Russian  peasant  might  still  pay 
the  old  tax  measured  in  roubles,  but  he  no  longer 
paid  the  same  measure  of  wheat  or  rye,  or  even  an 
appreciable  percentage  of  it.  That  is  a  universal 
phenomenon  in  Europe,  and,  as  a  consequence,  half- 
starved  towns  everywhere  confront  an  opulent 
countryside.  The  country  no  longer  pays  the  old 
tribute  to  the  town,  and  the  town  goes  short  by  the 
amount  of  this  surplus  which  it  had  formerly 
exacted. 

Nor  could  any  voluntary  exchange  of  goods  re- 
place this  old  involuntary  rent.  The  town  produced 
much  less  than  before.  Paper  money  would  buy 
little  or  nothing,  and  the  peasants  became  increas- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      121 

ingly  reluctant  to  accept  it.  In  Germany,  Austria 
and  Hungary  the  town  lived  in  the  last  years  of 
the  war  and  the  first  year  of  peace  largely  by  the 
illicit  "  knapsack  trade."  Townsmen  went  out  into 
the  country  and  carried  back  meat  and  meal  or 
vegetables,  which  they  obtained  largely  by  bartering 
their  own  accumulated  superfluities  for  these  neces- 
sities. A  glance  at  the  advertisement  columns  of 
an  Austrian  newspaper  will  still  show  evidence  that 
the  town  is  exporting  its  jewels,  furs,  laces,  linen, 
even  its  superfluous  boots  and  underclothes,  to  pay 
for  food  obtained  directly  from  the  peasants  or  the 
smugglers  who  deal  with  them.  Under  cover  of 
the  enemy's  blockade,  the  country  which  had  been 
but  lately  the  tributary  of  the  town,  now  held  its 
hunger  to  ransom.  Its  reluctance  to  part  with  food 
to  the  town  became  so  extreme,  that  some  even  speak 
of  the  "blockade"  of  the  town  by  the  country. 

The  country  or,  to  be  accurate,  the  producing 
peasantry,  had  in  Russia  and  even  in  Hungary  been 
oppressed  by  the  town,  or  by  the  State  which  repre- 
sented the  town.  The  Russian  peasant  before  the 
war  was  underfed.  The  grain  which  he  ought  to 
have  eaten  was  taken  from  him  in  taxes,  and  sent 
overseas  to  pay  the  interest  on  the  foreign  debt  of 
Tsardom.  The  first  use  which  the  peasants  made 
of  their  liberation  from  the  former  tribute  was  to 
increase  their  own  consumption  of  their  own 
produce.     Many    observers     noted    this     fact    in 


122  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

Russia  even  before  the  revolution.  A  Hunga- 
rian peasant  was  heard  to  say :  "  Once  I  used 
to  eat  my  potatoes  and  send  my  ducks  to  market: 
now  I  eat  the  ducks  and  sell  the  potatoes."  A  peas- 
antry which  had  been  left  illiterate  and  uncultivated, 
felt  no  new  need  of  the  things  with  which  the  starv- 
ing town  might  still  have  supplied  it.  It  ate  its  own 
surplus.  The  eastern  peasant  is  to  an  extent,  which 
would  startle  us  with  our  experience  of  our  own 
half-urban  villages,  independent  of  the  town's  prod- 
uce. He  can  at  need  make  his  own  dip-candles, 
weave  his  own  clothes,  or  revert  to  the  use  of  the 
flail  when  he  threshes.^  The  reduction  of  the  coun- 
try's tribute  to  the  town  meant  very  largely  that  the 
country  had  ceased  to  produce  for  the  town,  and 
met  only  its  own  needs. 

No  country  in  Central  or  Eastern  Europe,  how- 
ever conservative,  escapes  this  new  relationship  of 
the  country  to  the  town.  Revolution  immensely  ag- 
gravated its  inconvenience.  The  rent,  which  the 
country  still  paid,  though  only  in  nominal  values, 
now  disappeared  altogether.  In  Hungary  (I  pre- 
fer to  speak  of  the  case  which  I  saw  personally) 
the  Soviets  abolished  at  one  blow  rents,  interest  on 
mortgages  and  land  tax.  The  sounder  policy  would 
obviously  have  been  to  impose  a  heavy  tax  on  all 
occupiers  of  agricultural  land,  payable  in  kind. 
Thanks  to  these  measures,  the  town  could  now  live 

1  See  Varga,   op.   cit.,  p.  98. 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      123 

only  by  exchanging  its  manufactured  goods,  and  of 
these  it  produced  not  more  but  less  than  before. 
The  Soviet  Republics  also  suffered  from  the  con- 
scious hostility  of  the  richer  peasants,  who  now  boy- 
cotted and  blockaded  the  towns,  not  merely  for  eco- 
nomic reasons,  but  also  in  some  degree  from  a  dis- 
like of  their  "  red  "  tendencies.  The  same  phenom- 
enon is  strongely  marked  in  Austria,  where  the  cler- 
ical and  conservative  peasants  regard  Socialistic 
Vienna,  mild  though  its  Socialism  is,  as  a  Babylon 
of  iniquity,  and  there  are  even  signs  of  it  in  the 
feeling  of  the  rural  districts  towards  Berlin.  It 
may  be  an  exaggeration  to  suppose  that  the  country 
deliberately  injures  itself  a  little  in  order  to  hurt 
the  goodless  town  more,  but  it  is  certainly  true  that 
the  peasants,  farmers  and  landlords  (where  these 
survive)  refuse  to  regard  it  as  any  part  of  their 
patriotic  duty  to  make  the  least  effort,  or  to  incur 
the  smallest  sacrifice  to  save  the  starving  towns. 
Their  reasons  are  mainly  economic :  the  towns  have 
nothing  to  sell;  paper  money  is  not  worth  gaining; 
no  pressure  of  rent  or  taxation  compels  them  to  sell. 
But  there  may  be  a  touch  of  sectarian  and  partisan 
malice  in  the  indifference  with  which  the  Austrian 
peasant  watches  the  agony  of  Vienna. 

Another  phase  in  the  new  relationship  of  town 
and  country  will  begin  whenever,  if  ever,  the  new 
democratic  States  begin  to  break  up  the  big  feudal 
estates  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe.     This  has 


124  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

happened  already,  in  the  BaUic  States  broken 
off  from  Russia.  It  is  happening  to  a  certain 
extent  in  Roumania.  It  is  happening  also  in 
Czecho-Slovakia,  at  any  rate  in  all  cases  where  the 
big  landowners  are  Germans  or  Magyars.  It  may 
happen  in  Poland,  though  as  yet  the  Diet  has  merely 
passed  a  rather  weak  resolution  by  a  majority  of  one 
vote,  in  favor  of  the  gradual  expropriation  of  the 
larger  estates.,  in  return  for  full  compensation.  In 
Prussia,  also,  a  warning  has  been  given  that  com- 
pulsory expropriation  will  begin  a  year  hence,  unless 
the  Junkers  in  the  meanwhile  sell  voluntarily.  One 
may  doubt  whether  much  will  happen  to  give  effect 
to  these  threats  either  in  Prussia  or  in  Poland,  short 
of  a  Social  revolution.  In  Hungary  also,  the  peas- 
ants, though  at  present  they  may  back  the  **  white  " 
counter-revolution,  are  resolute  in  demanding  the 
breaking-up  of  the  big  estates.  Socialism  may 
preach  in  theory  the  advisability  of  the  extensive 
cultivation  of  big  estates  on  a  communal  plan,  and 
may  attempt,  as  it  does  in  Russia  and  did  in  Hun- 
gary, to  realize  this  system.  In  practice,  however, 
it  seems  fated  to  further  the  break-up  of  the  big 
estates  in  favor  of  what  is  virtually  peasant  owner- 
ship. The  effect  is  bound  to  be  detrimental  to  the 
towns.  In  the  first  place,  even  where  the  peasant 
pays  purchase-instalments,  he  will  pay  less  than  his 
old  rent,  and  thus  the  tribute  to  the  town  is  dimin- 
ished.    In-  the  second  place,  a  narrow-minded,  ill- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      125 

educated  peasantry,  often  too  ignorant  to  see  the 
advantages  even  of  cooperative  methods,  produces 
on  these  small  estates  very  much  less  than  the  same 
land  yielded  under  the  more  or  less  scientific 
cultivation  of  the  big  landlord.  The  outlook 
for  the  towns  seems  to  be  distinctly  worse  under 
peasant  agriculture  than  under  the  feudal  system. 
Politically,  moreover,  a  peasantry  which  may  in  some 
countries,  for  a  time,  and  for  certain  purposes, 
make  a  soTt  of  fighting  alliance  with  moderate  So- 
cialism, until  it  obtains  the  coveted  land,  will  become 
solidly  conservative  in  its  voting,  so  soon  as  it  has 
got  tlie  land.  The  town  loses  not  merely  its  old 
ascendancy  as  the  tribute-taker:  it  also  loses  its 
leadership  in  politics  and  polls  only  its  own  vote. 

The  broad  fact  would  seem  to  be  then,  that  the 
economic  consequences  of  the  war  and  the  blockade 
include  a  reversal  in  the  relations  of  town  and  coun- 
try which  were  usual  in  modem  European  States. 
The  country  realizes  its  independence,  and  is  eco- 
nomically in  a  position  to  dictate  to  the  town.  It 
is  an  audacious  experiment  in  such  conditions  to  plan 
a  dictatorship  of  the  urban  proletariat.  One  may 
proclaim  it,  one  may  even  partially  realize  it,  but 
Russian  experience  suggests  so  far,  that  even  with 
great  address,  with  all  the  resources  of  skillful  propa- 
ganda and  armed  force  at  its  command,  the  prole- 
tarian State  may  be  for  years  at  grips  with  the  ef- 
fective economic  dictatorship,  unorganized  and  un- 


126  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

intelligent  though  it  is,  of  the  food-producmg  coun- 
tryside. One  thinks  of  the  primitive  Roman  polit- 
icat  parable  of  the  members  and  the  belly.  The  Rus- 
sian Socialist  State  may  eventually  win  in  this  strug- 
gle, but  the  object  lesson  of  its  difficulties  is  a  severe 
deterrent  to  Socialists  in  Central  Europe.  The  case, 
however,  is  sufficiently  serious  in  either  event.  The 
German  Socialist  movement  may  shrink  from  at- 
tempting a  social  revolution,  because  it  knows  that 
if  it  did  so,  it  would  be  starved  by  the  joint  blockade 
of  the  Allies  and  its  own  peasantry.  But  it  also 
knows  that  if  it  makes  no  revolution,  it  will  be 
slowly  starved  out  by  the  loss  of  its  foreign  trade 
and  the  operation  of  the  indemnity.  If  it  could  in- 
augurate a  constructive  agricultural  policy,  it  might 
in  a  few  years  save  itself  without  revolution.  With 
a  sufficiency  of  coal  and  raw  materials,  it  could 
again  produce  goods  to  exchange  for  home-grown 
food.  If  it  were  strong  enough  to  tax  the  wealthy 
countryside  heavily,  as  it  ought  to  be  taxed,  it 
would  stimulate  production.^     If  it  had  moral  pres- 

1  Such  phrases  are  easily  written,  but  the  mere  restoration 
of  agriculture  in  Central  Europe  to  its  pre-war  level  of  pro- 
ductivity will  be  difficult.  What  is  needed  to  cover  the  loss 
of  imported  food  would  be  in  Germany  an  increase  of  pro- 
ductivity by  15  per  cent.  That  must  be  achieved,  moreover, 
in  spite  of  the  loss  of  Posen,  one  of  the  most  productive 
provinces.  At  present,  or  rather  in  1919,  the  decrease  in  the 
productivity  of  the  soil  amounted,  according  to  Professor 
Starling's  official  report,  to  40  per  cent.  ("  Report  on  Food 
Conditions  in  Germany,"  Cmd.  280),  while  the  live  stock,  tak- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       127 

tige,  it  might  educate  the  peasantry  into  the  adop- 
tion of  a  more  social  attitude,  and  organize  them  for 
increased  scientific  production,  so  as  to  reduce  the 
need  for  imports  to  a  minimum.  It  is  as  yet  too 
weak,  too  battered,  too  dejected,  too  divided,  to  do 
any  of  these  things.  The  consequence  may  be  a 
decay  of  the  whole  urban  civilization  which  Europe 
had  based  on  the  industrial  system. 

THE  MILITARIST  REACTION 

If  revolutionary  Socialism  in  Central  Europe 
seeks  a  way  of  escape  from  the  intolerable  present 
by  creating  a  new  world,  the  militarist  reaction 
would  restore  the  glorious  past  on  its  traditional 
foundations.  It  must  fight  on  two  fronts.  It  is 
opposed,  first  and  chiefly,  to  the  parties  of  the  Left, 
which  destroyed  the  old  Hohenzollern  and  Hapsburg 
Monarchies  in  the  repul^lican  revolution,  and  it 
thrives  largely  by  trading  on  the  danger  that  this 
democratic  revolution  may  be  followed,  on  the  Rus- 
sian precedent,  by  a  plunge  into  Communism.  It 
is  against  responsible  Parliamentary  Government : 
and  it  would  restore  the  Monarchy.  Its  driving  mo- 
tives are  a  dread,  firstly,  of  the  drastic  direct  taxa- 
tion of  wealth  to  which  the  Republic  has  resorted ; 
and,  secondly,  of  the  growing  power  of  organized 

ing  quality  with  quantity,  had  decreased  by  55  per  cent.  The 
chief  necessity  seems  to  be  artificial  fertilizers,  especially 
phosphates,  which  we  have  monopolized. 


428  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

labor,  which  has  achieved  through  the  statutory 
Works  Councils  a  share  in  the  control  of  industry. 
Its  two  sections  represent  in  Germany  the  "heavy 
industries"  and  capital  generally  (German  People's 
Party)  and  the  Junker  agrarian  interest  (German 
National  People's  Party).  In  Austria  the  similar 
forces  are  on  the  surface  primarily  clerical  and  Cath- 
olic. In  Hungary  their  speciality  is  a  savage  anti- 
Semitism,  known  locally  as  "  Christianity."  None 
of  these  parties  disdain  constitutional  methods.  The 
Germans  under  Herr  Stinnes  (the  coal  magnate) 
buy  up  newspapers  wholesale,  and  have  done  well 
at  the  polls.  But,  ultimately,  all  these  parties  rely 
on  armed  force,  and  aim  at  a  military  coup  d'etat,  as 
inevitably  as  the  Communists  work  for  a  violent 
revolution.  They  have  with  them  the  whole  of  the 
old  professional  officer  caste,  which,  besides  sharing 
their  politics  and  the  royalist  tradition,  has  also  lost 
a  career  through  the  disarmament  prescribed  in  the 
Peace  Treaties.  The  Army  has  for  the  reaction  a 
double  importance.  It  is  firstly  and  chiefly  the  in- 
surance against  a  proletarian  revolution.  It  is  also 
the  tool  which  must  somehow  be  kept  sharp  and 
serviceable  against  the  day  when  force  may  be  used 
with  some  prospect  of  success  to  reverse  the  ruin  and 
humiliation  of  the  Peace  Treaties,  A  wistful  and 
romantic  regret  for  the  glorious  past  blends  with 
the  much  harder  and  shrewder  elements  of  nation- 
alistic capitalism. 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      129 

It  was  the  Spartacists,  whose  desperate,  ill-calcu- 
lated attempts  at  revolution  in  the  winter  of  19 18- 
19 1 9  compelled  the  German  Republic  to  improvise 
an  armed  force.  The  "  Free  Corps,"  which  Herr 
Nbske  raised  under  old  professional  officers,  were 
composed  of  the  minority  which  enjoys  war  as  a 
trade.  These  young  men  were  attracted  chiefly  by 
the  lure  of  good  food  and  good  clothes,  but  they 
soon  became  under  instruction,  during  their  bitter 
feud  with  the  working  class,  a  reliable  class  army. 
Republicans  were  systematically  weeded  out  when 
their  numbers  were  reduced.  Out  of  these  brutal- 
ized and  reactionary  elements  a  permanent  profes- 
sional standing  army  has  been  created,  based  on 
twelve  years'  service  with  the  colors,  as  the  Treaty 
of  Versailles  prescribes.  In  Herr  Noske's  intention 
it  was  mainly,  perhaps  solely,  an  anti-revolutionary 
army.  It  supported  the  permanent  state  of  siege 
through  which  he  governed,  and  was  used  to  sup- 
press strikes  and  to  intimidate  the  workers.  His 
idea  evidently  was  to  restore  not  merely  order,  but 
the  old  discipline  of  work,  the  former  habit  of  sub- 
missive industry,  by  the  dread  which  its  grenades 
and  machine  guns  inspired.  This  "  white "  mili- 
tarism, whether  one  studies  it  in  its  savage  manifes- 
tations in  Hungary,  where  corps  of  officers,  pre- 
sumably of  gentle  birth,  personally  engaged  in  whole- 
sale executions  of  untried  Socialists,  and  amused 
themselves  by  stripping  and  violating  women  and 


I30  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

mutilating  men,  or  in  the  more  orderly  brutality  of 
Noske's  "  guards,"  reveals  the  change  which  war 
has  wrought  in  the  mind  of  civilized  Europe.  The 
inhibitions  of  custom  and  precept,  which  in  our  early 
years  gradually  suppress  the  primitive  savage  within 
us,  were  broken  down  by  the  experience  of  four  years 
of  organized  violence.  Men  who  before  the  war 
would  have  thought  it  unnatural  and  difficult  to  hurt 
and  injure  another,  made  the  discovery  that  it  is 
really  very  easy  to  kill.  Every  one,  from  Sparta- 
cists  to  Junkers,  now  resorted  easily,  instinctively, 
naturally,  to  violence,  and  in  some  the  lust  of  cruelty 
had  grown  accustomed  to  periodic  satisfaction.  The 
politics  of  Europe,  alike  in  its  class  and  in  its  inter- 
national struggles,  will  reflect  the  brutalities  of  the 
war  for  twenty  years  to  come. 

When  the  British  and  American  Governments  in- 
sisted on  abolishing  conscription  in  Central  Europe, 
and  set  up  small  professional  armies  in  its  place, 
they  were  thinking  of  "  militarism  "  only  in  its  in- 
ternational aspect.  They  meant  to  make  Germany 
impotent  for  a  war  of  revenge.  They  failed  to  see 
that  in  the  bitter  class  struggle  which  prevails  every- 
where on  the  Continent,  they  were  placing  a  weapon 
in  the  hands  of  capital  and  the  Junker  class  for  use 
against  the  workers.  In  England,  it  is  still  possible 
to  have  a  professional  army  which  is,  as  yet,  more 
or  less  non-political,  because  our  Labor  movement 
has  scarcely  begun  to  raise  fundamental  issues.    ^Ve 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?       131 

are,  as  a  nation,  somewhat  Indifferent  to  ideas,  and 
relatively  apathetic  in  politics,  as  these  starving  peo- 
ples cannot  be  who  live  on  the  edge  of  the  abyss. 
At  our  General  Election  about  55  per  cent,  took 
the  trouble  to  vote,  as  against  over  90  per  cent,  in 
Germany.  An  army  cannot  stand  aloof.  It  will 
be  either  Socialistic  or  reactionary.  Under  its  old 
professional  officers  its  character  is  fixed.  By  far 
the  safer  course  would  have  been  to  have  dispensed 
with  any  standing  army  at  all,  and  to  have  allowed 
the  creation  of  a  citizen  militia  on  the  Swiss  model. 
Drawn  from  all  classes  and  all  opinions,  it  could 
not  have  been  used  to  further  by  violence  the  politics 
of  any  one  class.  Nor  would  a  militia  of  this  type, 
with  the  experience  of  the  war  behind  it,  be  likely  to 
back  a  policy  of  adventure  and  revenge.  It  is  only 
a  small  minority  which  enjoys  war  for  its  own  sake, 
but  it  is  precisely  this  minority  which  now  consti- 
tutes the  standing  army.  The  issue  has  still  to  be 
decided  whether  the  Allies  can  enforce  the  reduction 
of  this  army  to  the  Treaty  figure  of  100,000  men. 
My  own  conviction  is  that  the  Allies  will  fail,  and 
that  even  if  Germany  complies  outwardly,  a  reserve 
class  army  will  somehow  be  maintained  and  perhaps 
tolerated  in  excess  of  the  nominal  allowance.  It  is 
probably  true  that  a  force  of  100,000  men  is  not 
sufficient  to  prevent  attempts  at  social  revolution  in 
Germany,  unless  a  part  of  the  middle  class  retains 
arms  and  a  rudimentary  military  organization.     In 


132  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

any  event  the  Junkers  can  play  upon  that  fear. 
Their  further  hope,  that  a  day  will  come  when  even 
a  relatively  small  and  ill-equipped  army  may  be  able 
to  achieve  something  on  the  Rhine,  is  not  entirely 
chimerical,  if  we  continue  to  squander  our  forces 
simultaneously  against  Russia,  Turkey,  Ireland  and 
the  peoples  of  the  Middle  East. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  creation  of  these  profes- 
sional armies  in  Central  Europe  has  put  an  end  to 
the  momentary  military  impotence  of  the  middle 
classes.  The  conditions  for  successful  revolution 
are  no  longer  so  favorable  as  they  were  immediately 
after  the  armistice,  though  the  motive  of  economic 
misery  may  be  no  less  powerful.  Unless  a  Russian 
army  were  within  easy  distance  of  Berlin,  it  is  not 
easy  to-day  to  conceive  even  the  temporary  triumph 
of  an  armed  German  revolution.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  find  it  equally  hard  to  believe  in  the  success  for 
many  consecutive  weeks  or  months  of  a  monarchist- 
militarist  coup  d'etat.  The  experience  gained  in 
'Herr  von  Kapp's  attempt  was  illuminating.  It  was 
defeated  in  spite  of  the  weakness  of  the  Coalition 
Government,  and  the  active  or  passive  support  of 
almost  all  the  armed  regular  force,  both  troops  and 
police,  by  the  workers'  general  strike  and  the  passive 
resistance  of  the  .Republican  bureaucracy.  The 
strike  came  as  the  instinctive  response  of  the  people 
to  a  challenge  from  the  hated  Junker  class,  and  was 
maintained,  almost  without  organization,  with  an  i«n- 


HOW  WILL  EUROPE  REACT?      133 

pressive  and  formidable  unanimity.  The  political 
strike  is  a  powerful  weapon  of  defense,  and  prob- 
ably will  avail  to  break  any  similar  challenge  from 
the  capitalist  reaction  in  the  future.  On  the  other 
hand,  its  defects  as  an  aggressive  tactic  are  equally 
evident.  The  moment  that  a  working  class  ceases 
merely  to  resist,  and  attempts  by  the  general  strike 
to  extort  something  positive,  it  is  easily  outmaneu- 
vered.  The  pressure  of  a  device,  which  entails  semi- 
starvation  on  those  who  use  it,  cannot  be  kept  up 
indefinitely,  nor  can  it  be  renewed  at  frequent  in- 
tervals. When  the  Kappist  conspirators  admitted 
defeat,  the  Strike  Committee  sought  permanent 
guarantees  from  the  reinstated  Coalition  Cabinet. 
It  got  them  in  words.  The  Junker  ringleaders  were 
to  be  punished.  The  disloyal  troops  were  to  be  dis- 
banded. Formations  of  armed  workmen  were  to 
be  enlisted.  The  coal-mines  were  to  be  Socialized. 
Not  one  of  these  promises  has  been  kept,  nor  was 
there  even  a  serious  attempt  to  honor  them.  The 
Russian  general  strike  of  1905  led  to  a  similar  expe- 
rience. A  Constitution  was  promised,  but  the  ful- 
filment made  it  useless  in  practice.  A  general  strike 
may  shake  a  ruling  class,  but  it  makes  no  lasting  con- 
quests, unless  it  is  backed  (as  in  Petrograd  in  191 7) 
by  armed  force.  A  strike  is  a  siege  which  weakens 
the  enemy  garrison,  but  a  storming  party  is  required 
to  occupy  the  fortress. 

If  the  class  struggle  in  Germany  is  waged  only 


134  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

within  its  own  borders,  the  most  probable  outcome 
is  perhaps  stalemate.  Each  side  may  attempt  to 
use  force.  Each  will  find,  even  if  it  achieves  mo- 
mentary success,  that  its  triumph  is  short-lived. 
Strikes,  general  or  recurrent,  would  baffle  a  jack- 
boot monarchy.  A  proletarian  dictatorship,  if  it 
could  be  proclaimed,  and  if  it  could  defeat  on  the 
battlefield  opponents  who  are  made  of  sounder  metal 
than  any  Kolchak  or  Denikin,  would  still  have  to 
overcome  the  passive  resistance  of  the  food-produc- 
ing countryside.  That  might  conceivably  be  man- 
aged, but  only  if  Russia  were  in  a  position  to  help  not 
merely  with  arms  but  with  grain,  which  she  could 
both  grow  and  transport. 

This  hasty  reconnaissance  of  the  three  roads  by 
which  Central  Europe  might  attempt  to  make  a 
sortie  from  her  misery  has  led  us  to  a  negative  con- 
clusion. The  forces  of  revolution  and  reaction  seem 
to  neutralize  each  other.  The  middle  path  will  lead 
nowhere,  unless  the  victorious  capitalist  States 
promptly  abandon  their  dream  of  exploiting  the 
vanquished,  and  positively  foster  the  industry  which 
they  have  ruined  for  their  own  ends. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE 

The  history  of  that  curious  device,  the  "  Man- 
dates," given  by  the  League  of  Nations  to  the  vic- 
tors for  the  government  of  conquered  territories 
overseas,  illustrates  at  once  the  strength  and  the 
weakness  of  idealistic  movements  in  the  world  to- 
day. The  repugnance  which  all  Socialists  and  some 
Liberals  felt  at  the  thought  of  waging  "  a  war  of 
liberation  "  for  the  usual  ends  of  conquest,  had  a 
certain  influence  upon  the  Allied  Governments. 
The  pressure  for  a  peace  based  on  the  Stockholm 
formulae  was  powerful  during  the  dark  months  of 
1 91 7.  We  knew,  moreover,  that  our  acquisitive 
propensities  are  not  favorably  regarded  in  Amer- 
ica. The  volume  of  criticism  was  strong  enough  to 
suggest  to  our  rulers  that  it  might  be  wise  to  avoid 
the  appearance  of  annexation.  It  was  too  weak  to 
deter  them  from  reality.  The  notion  of  "  Man- 
dates "  fitted  comfortably  enough  into  the  prevalent 
ideology  of  Imperialism.  We  always  do  profess  to 
hold  the  territory  which  we  seize  as  a  "  sacred 
trust."     Great  care  was  taken,  however,  to  omit 

13s 


136  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

from  the  Settlement  every  detail  which  might  have 
led  to  an  honest  interpretation  of  the  idea.  The 
British  Labor  Party,  for  example,  had  proposed  that 
the  v^^hole  of  tropical  Africa,  and  not  merely  the 
former  German  colonies,  should  be  placed  under  the 
League  of  Nations.  We  hoped  in  this  way  to  bring 
the  Belgian,  the  Portuguese,  and  the  French  colonies, 
worse  governed  by  far,  from  the  native  standpoint, 
than  the  German  possessions,  under  the  supervision 
of  the  League.  This  would  have  ended  our  own 
recent  policy  of  monopoly  in  the  tropical  vegetable 
oils,  and  also  the  odious  French  schemes  for  the 
military  conscription  of  the  natives.  It  was  also  a 
part  of  our  plan  that  the  mandated  areas  should  be 
subject  to  searching  and  continuous  inspection  by 
officers  of  the  League.  More  important,  however, 
even  than  these  details,  was  our  proposal  that  the 
League  of  Nations  should  be,  above  all  things,  an 
economic  structure.  We  proposed  to  continue  in 
peace,  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  world,  the  rationing 
of  raw  materials  which  the  Allies  had  improvised 
during  war.  If  the  coal,  the  iron,  the  oil,  the  cot- 
ton, the  wool,  the  phosphates  and  the  grain  had  been 
distributed  under  internationa*l  control  from  the  first 
day  of  the  armistice  onward,  the  Continent  would 
have  escaped  the  dearth  which  seems  to-day  to  doom 
its  civilization.  The  League  could  have  governed 
by  dispensing  these  necessary  things,  nor  would  any 
problem  have  arisen  in  regard  to  the  oil  of  Mosul 


MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE     137 

or  the  phosphates  of  Nauru. ^  They  would  have 
been  distributed  to  all  who  needed  them,  in  propor- 
tions jfixed  by  a  standing  Council  of  the  League. 
None  of  these  conditions  commended  themselves  to 
the  Allies.  The  power  of  a  critical  opposition  dis- 
appeared in  the  hour  of  triumph,  and  the  "  Man- 
dates "  served  only  as  a  disguise  to  cover  the  fact  of 
annexation. 

AN  INTERNATIONAL  CIVIL  SERVICE 

Could  disinterested  government  of  backward  peo- 
ples be  attained  if  these  conditions  were  observed? 
Where  a  Civil  Service  has  a  high  tradition  of  duty 
and  honor,  as  in  British  West  Africa  it  certainly 
has,  the  thing  is  not  impossible.  The  scandals  of 
African  colonization  have  never  been  due  to  the 
spontaneous  vices  of  any  Civil  Service  —  British, 
French  or  German.  They  begin  only  when  the  in- 
terested views  of  the  settler,  the  planter,  the  trader 
and  the  concessionaire  have  overborne  or  corrupted 
the  administrator.     The  daring  idea  which  the  Brit- 

1  The  produce  of  the  rich  phosphate  deposits  of  Nauru,  a 
former  German  possession  in  the  Pacific,  are  to  be  divided 
between  the  British,  Australian  and  New  Zealand  markets. 
If  any  surplus  of  this  invaluable  fertilizer  remains  over,  it 
may  be  sold  to  the  rest  of  the  world  at  competitive  prices. 
The  oil  of  Mesopotamia  is  to  be  divided,  three  parts  to  British 
and  one  part  to  French  interests.  The  mandates  for  these 
places  were  assigned  by  the  Allies  to  themselves,  the  terms  of 
the  Charter  drawn  up,  and  the  division  of  the  material  re- 
sources arranged,  without  even  a  pretense  of  consulting  the 
League. 


138  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

ish  Labor  Party  originally  put  forward  (to  modify 
it  later),  that  direct  government  of  tropical  Africa 
might  be  confided  to  the  League  of  Nations,  has  been 
dismissed  much  too  lightly  by  the  man  of  the  world 
as  Utopian.  Short  of  this  solution,  there  is  no 
final  cure  for  the  rivalry  of  Empires.  In  no  other 
way  can  we  hope  to  discard  once  for  all  the  tradi- 
tion that  a  colony  is  an  estate  and  a  possession, 
which  some  white  nation,  or  its  ruling  class,  keeps 
for  its  own  use,  to  the  exclusion  of  others.  It  im- 
plies, needless  to  say,  a  League  of  Nations  which 
has  won  an  assured  position  of  authority  for  itself. 
It  might  work  ill,  moreover,  unless  the  League  had 
its  democratic  Assembly,  in  which  a  vigilant  oppo> 
sition  would  conduct  a  probing  scrutiny  into  the 
doings  of  its  officials.  The  crux  of  this  problem 
is  really  the  question  whether  an  International  Civil 
Service  can  be  created.  Every  national  service  has 
a  tradition  of  its  own,  more  or  less  fixed  by  tem- 
perament, history  and  education.  One  is  inclined 
on  first  thoughts  to  conceive  an  International  Service 
as  a  corps  which  would  necessarily  lack  traditions  or 
personality  or  character.  Could  the  men  of  many 
nations  who  formed  it  contrive  to  reconcile  their 
many  divergent  conceptions  of  conduct,  personal 
rights  and  the  native's  status,  so  as  to  form  a  service 
capable  of  cohesion,  discipline  and  unity?  If  one 
were  to  amalgamate  the  existing  services  in  the 


MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE     139 

tropics,  and  recruit  new  aspirants  at  haphazard,  the 
result  would  certainly  be  chaos. 

The  key  to  this  problem  is  education.  There  is 
just  one  international  body  in  the  world  which  has 
solved  it,  and  it  is  the  Catholic  Church.  The  So- 
ciety of  Jesus  has  never*  in  all  its  many  enterprises 
—  educational,  missionary,  administrative  and  dip- 
lomatic —  failed  to  blend  its  novices  into  a  solid 
phalanx.  Its  failures  and  errors  have  never  been 
due  to  nationalist  friction  or  racial  incompatibility. 
Its  success  in  blending,  men  of  all  nationalities  has 
been  due  to  a  common  system  of  education.  In  its 
schools  and  colleges  it  created  a  Jesuit  mind,  which, 
with  all  its  failings  and  its  qualities,  superseded  what 
was  particularist  and  provincial  in  the  original  na- 
tional character  of  its  novices.  The  tale  is  dim  and 
half- forgotten  to-day  of  the  Jesuit  Communist  State 
in  Paraguay.  Few  of  us  could  recall  any  account 
of  it  ^  save  in  the  jesting  pages  of  Candide.  The 
balance  of  evidence  is,  however,  that  for  a  century 
and  a  half  the  Fathers  promoted  the  welfare  of  a 
big  American-Indian  population  with  a  disinterested- 
ness and  a  success  unique  in  the  history  of  the  deal- 
ings- of  white  with  colored  men.  This  gentle  and 
intelligent  but  by  no  means  enterprising  population 
never  responded  to  the  European  stimulus  of  profit 

1  See  the  delightful  record  in  A   Vanquished  Arcadia,  by 
R.  B.  Cunningham-Graham. 


I40  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

for  individual  work.  The  Jesuits  organized  it  for 
social  labor,  and  all  the  wealth  of  its  great  planta- 
tions was  owned  in  common.  With  the  image  of  a 
Saint,  with  banners  and  a  choir  at  its  head  each 
village  went  out  in  the  morning  singing  to  its  fields, 
and  singing  returned  in  the  evening.  Festivals  and 
pageants,  always  with  a  religious  meaning,  kept  the 
people  gay.  They  erected  churches  of  a  noble  archi- 
tecture, and  cultivated  classical  chamber  music. 
The  records  show  that  these  Fathers  who  taught  the 
natives  to  build  up  a  thriving  agricultural  life,  and 
gave  to  all  their  labors  the  rhythm  of  a  happy  song, 
were  men  of  all  races  —  Germans,  Dutch,  Irish  and 
Poles,  as  well  as  Spaniards  and  Italians.  This  ex- 
periment proves,  at  least,  that  a  common  education 
can  create  an  International  Civil  Service.  That 
same  achievement  need  not  be  beyond  the  capacity 
of  the  League  of  Nations. 

The  first  step  would  be  to  create  a  college  or  col- 
leges endowed  by  the  League.  One  might  be 
founded  at  Cairo  for  African  studies,  and  another 
at  Constantinople  or  Damascus  for  Oriental  needs. 
The  teaching  staff  must  itself  be  international,  and 
should  include  experienced  practical  administrators, 
as  well  as  the  ablest  linguists,  historians,  economists 
and  anthropologists  drawn  from  the  Universities  of 
all  Europe  and  America.  The  students  would  be 
young  men  and  women  of  all  nations  who  feel  the 
attraction  of  this  career  —  Scandinavians,  Germans, 


MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE     141 

Americans  and  Russians,  as  well  as  Englishmen  and 
Frenchmen.  They  would  spend  some  years  together 
in  close  touch  with  the  native  life  of  Cairo  and 
Damascus.  They  might  learn  their  Arabic  at  the 
ancient  Moslem  University  of  El  Azhar,  where  one 
may  see  the  faithful  of  all  Africa,  black,  tawny  and 
white,  at  their  rhythmic  prayers.  If  there  were 
among  the  professors  even  a  few  who  had  magne- 
tism and  imagination,  a  common  mind  and  a  com- 
mon tradition,  based  on  love  for  these  simple  peo- 
ples and  an  ambition  of  social  service,  would  grow 
up  among  the  students.  It  should  be  understood 
that  the  graduates,  without  regard  to  nationality, 
should  be  drafted  to  serve  in  British,  French,  Bel- 
gium or  Portuguese  colonies  and  mandated  areas,  as 
vacancies  arose.  At  the  end  of  a  generation,  or  less, 
the  process  of  internationalization  would  be  com- 
pleted, and  all  tropical  Africa  might  be  transferred 
without  a  wrench  or  a  perceptible  disturbance,  to  the 
direct  Government  of  the  League.  From  this  same 
college,  backward  Oriental  States,  like  Persia,  might 
draw  the  administrative  assistance  they  required. 

THE  POLITICS  OF  OIL 

Is  It  childish,  in  view  of  the  ugly  reality,  to  pur- 
sue these  Utopian  dreams?  One  wearies  of  the 
negative,  cynical  attack.  It  is  too  easy  to  demon- 
strate the  crude  acquisitive  motive  at  work  in  Mes- 
opotamia or  Nauru.     How  should  we,  who  loathe 


142  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

Imperialism  and  believe  in  the  ideal  of  the  League, 
solve  the  problem  of  Mesopotamia  and  its  oil? 
The  instinct  which  carries  the  conqueror  there  is  not 
wholly  anti-social.  The  world  needs  this  source  of 
power  and  heat  and  light.  Civilization  is  going 
under  in  Europe  for  lack  of  coal,  or  its  substitute, 
oil.  The  sparse  tribes  of  half-nomad  Arabs  and 
Kurds  who  live  round  Mosul  can  have  no  right  to 
deny  its  resources  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  But  it 
is  equally  clear,  if  we  start  from  this  premise,  that 
the  victor  who  happens  to  have  given  himself  a 
"  mandate  "  for  this  territory  has  also  no  right  in 
morals  to  monopolize  the  product.  It  is  easy  to  say 
that  the  oil  should  be  assigned  on  an  equitable  per- 
centage basis  to  the  various  peoples  who  need  it. 
That  principle  can  hardly  be  applied,  however,  un- 
less it  be  generalized.  Only  if  an  International 
Commission  of  the  League  of  Nations  had  the  right 
to  control  all  the  exportable  surpluses  of  the  world's 
oil-fields,  could  a  rationing  system  be  applied  fairly 
to  the  yield  of  Mesopotamia.  As  things  are,  this 
question  has  been  settled  by  a  rough  rule  of  grab  by 
the  two  chief  European  victors.^  Mosul,  in  point 
of  fact,  fell  under  the  Secret  Treaties  to  France. 
Their  neatly  colored  maps  showed  it  plainly  in  the 
French  sphere.     It  was  our  troops  who  acquired  it, 

1  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  we  have  also  a  secret 
agreement  with  France,  by  which  we  divide  between  us,  in 
;  equal  parts,  the  oil  of  Roumania. 


MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE     143 

however,  and  hold  it,  and  our  Foreign  Office  was 
able  to  produce  a  concession  granted  by  the  Turks 
on  the  eve  of  the  war.  If  the  French  insisted  on 
taking  the  territory,  we  should  none  the  less  claim 
the  whole  of  the  oil.  The  result,  after  hot  and 
angry  debates  in  the  French  Chamber,  is  that  we 
keep  the  territory  and  75  per  cent,  of  the  oil.  The 
remaining  25  per  cent,  goes  to  France.  The  needs 
of  the  rest  of  the  world  were  apparently  not  con- 
sidered. 

So  far,  however,  we  have  only  touched  the  fringe 
of  this  problem  of  property.  The  phosphates  of 
Nauru  are  to  be  worked  as  a  Government  monopoly. 
There  is  in  the  scheme  for  distributing  the  yield  a 
bafflingly  naive  national  egoism.  But  no  private  in- 
terest gains.  The  British  and  colonial  farmer  will 
get  his  fertilizer  at  or  about  cost  price.  The  same 
Government  which  believes  in  nationalizing  phos- 
phates, scouts  the  idea  of  treating  the  oil  of  Meso- 
potamia on  a  similar  plan.  It  will  fall  to  one  of  the 
existing  syndicates.  The  tax-payer  at  home  will 
bear  the  cost  of  the  big  garrison  which  occupies 
Mesopotamia.  The  French  revenue  will  be  charged 
with  the  cost  of  the  army  which  secures  the  pipe-line 
from  Mosul  to  a  Syrian  port.  The  syndicate,  re- 
lieved from  these  first  charges,  will  make  its  profits 
on  the  oil.  Conquest  does  not  "  pay,"  if  one  re- 
gards it  as  a  national  enterprise,  but  most  assuredly 
it  pays  from  the  standpoint  of  "  big  business." 


144  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

If  a  Labor  Government  had  been  in  power,  it 
would  have  found  in  this  question  of  Mosul  the 
test  of  its  morals  and  its  statemanship.  Its  first 
task  would  have  been  to  appeal  to  the  intelligence 
of  the  people  of  Mesopotamia,  so  that  the  develop- 
ment of  the  oil-field  could  have  been  arranged  with- 
out a  garrison  of  80,000  men  to  enforce  it,  and 
without  those  aeroplane  patrols,  which  scour  the 
desert  and  drop  their  bombs  when  they  see  a  tribe 
moving  below  them.  It  would  have  wanted  much 
patience  and  tact.  But  suppose  we  could  have  said 
with  complete  honesty:  "The  profits  of  this  piece 
of  work  which  we  propose  to  do  in  Mosul  shall  all 
of  them  remain  in  the  country.  Year  by  year  they 
will  constitute  a  fund  which  shall  be  used  entirely 
for  your  benefit.  With  them  we  will  build  houses 
to  replace  your  miserable  huts.  With  them  we  will 
pay  teachers  for  your  children  and  doctors  for  your 
sick.  Your  fields  shall  be  irrigated.  Your  flocks 
and  herds  and  grain  shall  be  raised  from  improved 
stocks  and  seeds.  And  since  life  is  more  than  bread 
and  meat,  we  aim  also  at  something  more.  We  will 
create  in  Bagdad,  with  the  profits  of  this  oil,  a  great 
Mohammedan  University.  We  will  bring  back  the 
glories  of  the  Caliphs,  and  restore  the  culture  and 
the  wealth  that  made  of  Bagdad  one  of  the  great 
cities  of  civilization.  The  oil  we  shall  sell  at  a  low 
price  to  the  whole  world  that  needs  it.  Our  engi- 
neers shall  receive  adequate  salaries.     But  the  entire 


MANDATES  AND  THE  LEAGUE    145 

profits  of  the  enterprise,  after  interest  has  been  paid 
on  the  borrowed  capital,  belong  to  the  people  of 
Mesopotamia.  Appoint  your  Council  to  watch  our 
work.  Name  your  expert  auditors  to  see  that  we 
keep  our  word  to  you.  But  leave  us  unmolested  to 
do  a  great  work  for  you,  for  Islam,  for  God's 
glory,  and  for  the  whole  of  civilization."  William 
Penn,  with  a  much  less  advanced  population,  made 
a  success  of  a  much  less  attractive  scheme  than  this. 
I  cherish  the  belief  that  a  big  man,  a  man  of  magne- 
tism and  evident  honesty,  could  carry  it  through 
without  so  much  as  an  aeroplane  to  back  him. 

But  these  are  fancies.  Our  capitalist  Imperial- 
ism works  on  other  lines.  It  has  seized  the  oil. 
The  profits  will  go  to  a  syndicate  of  financiers. 
Mosul  will  be  dragooned  by  air-men  and  lancers, 
at  the  cost  of  the  submissive  tax-payer.  The  world 
will  laugh  at  our  cynicism,  and  in  Bagdad  no  Arab 
renaissance  will  flower  again. 


CONCLUSION 

If  the  reader's  patience  has  enabled  him  to  reach 
the  last  pages  of  this  gloomy  book,  his  opinion  is 
already  formed  concerning  its  main  thesis.  In  its 
description  of  the  actual  conditions  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Europe  there  is  nothing  that  is  new,  and 
little  that  is  disputable.  Most  of  the  main  facts  can 
be  verified  in  our  own  official  publications.  Central 
Europe  is  but  half  employed :  it  is  half-starved :  its 
death-rate  means  the  rapid  diminution  of  its  popula- 
tion :  complete  bankruptcy  threatens  it :  with  this 
lapse  into  a  slum  existence  its  culture  also  must  dis- 
appear. Poland  is  in  a  state  appreciably  worse,  and 
Russia  after  the  war,  the  civil  war  and  the  blockade, 
is  fast  losing  the  outward  appearance  of  a  civilized 
State.  These  are  facts  whicli^  no  instructed  critic 
will  gainsay. 

The  case,  to  put  it  a  little  more  precisely,  seems 
to  be  that  it  is  especially  the  urban  civilization  of 
Europe  which  is  threatened.  The  peasantry  will 
survive  (thinned,  indeed,  in  the  East  by  devastating 
epidemics)  and  perpetuate  the  less  advanced,  the  less 
cultivated  portion  of  each  nation.  It  is  the  towns 
and  the  industrial  populations  which  are  menaced 

146 


CONCLUSION  147 

with  a  rapid  decline.  The  emancipation  of  the  coun- 
try from  its  old  tributary  relation  to  the  town,  and 
the  Balkanization  of  great  parts  of  Central  Europe, 
with  the  arrest  of  internal  exchange  which  has  fol- 
lowed it,  conspire  with  the  financial  clauses  of  the 
Versailles  Treaty  to  forbid  the  hope  that  the  towns 
can  make  rapid  recovery. 

The  thesis  of  this  book  is  that,  in  this  ghastly 
process,  there  was  nothing  accidental.  The  peace 
was  the  expression  of  the  mind  of  the  capitalist 
classes  in  Great  Britain  and  France,  incarnated  by 
statesmen  who  won  an  overwhelming  verdict  of  ap- 
proval at  the  polls.  It  is  a  case,  infinitely  more 
cruel,  infinitely  more  vast  than  anything  in  the  pre- 
vious history  of  the  world,  which  shows,  as  many 
cases  on  a  smaller  scale  have  shown,  the  workings  of 
the  competitive  motive  in  Imperialism.  Capitalism 
does  not  aim  at  production :  it  aims  at  profit.  In 
this  settlement  it  has  overreached  itself.  The  profit 
to  certain  interests  will  be  immense,  but  it  may  also 
be  fleeting.  A  settlement  which  has  reduced  the 
productive  capacity  of  the  greater  part  of  the  Con- 
tinent to  a  fraction  of  what  it  was,  and  again  might 
be,  will  have  for  its  consequence,  if  it  endures,  the 
ruin  of  Europe  and  of  our  common  civilization. 

To  see  the  motive  is  also  to  be  skeptical  of  a  rem- 
edy. Some  of  those  responsible  may  feel  that  they 
have  gone  too  far:  some  may  recoil  from  the  more 
repugnant  consequences.     To  do  them  justice,  those 


148  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

who  meant  to  ruin  the  German  world-trade  did  not 
see  in  a  vision  the  millions  of  diseased  and  starving 
children  who  would  testify  to  the  completeness  of 
the  achievement.  The  motive,  however,  still  works. 
The  strategical  mastery  must  be  retained,  and  that 
involves  Balkanization.  Where  we  might  relax  and 
relent,  the  French  hold  us  back.  The  grasping  pred- 
atory attitude  cannot  be  reversed  without  risk  to  the 
whole  structure.  Liberals  who  believe  that  the 
League  of  Nations  can  begin  to  work,  or  that  the 
Treaties  can  now  be  revised  by  general  consent,  turn 
a  blind  eye  to  the  real  force  which  governs  the  world. 
This  is  Capitalist  Imperialism.  Its  excesses  might 
be  pruned  away  by  an  Asquith  or  a  Caillaux,  if 
ever  they  return  to  office,  but  they  would  be  the 
last  men  to  give  away  the  power  which  enables  us 
to  extort  economic  gain  from  naval  and  military 
mastery.  A  little  more  prudent,  a  little  more  hu- 
mane they  might  perhaps  be,  but  they  would  sur- 
render none  of  the  advantages  which  enable  the  rul- 
ing class  of  a  dominant  nation  to  exploit  other 
peoples  overseas,  by  the  use  of  force,  for  its  own 
particular  gain. 

We  saw  this  system  at  work  in  the  world  before 
the  war,  from  India  to  Morocco.  This  war  has 
turned  it  loose  upon  the  Continent,  at  the  expense 
of  peoples  of  our  own  race  and  culture,  and  the  best 
hope  that  seems  to  emerge  from  it  is,  perhaps,  that 
Rome  may  exploit  Carthage  instead  of  destroying 


CONCLUSION  149 

it.  At  present  it  is  the  cruder  alternative  that  pre- 
vails. Capitalism  does  not,  and  v^ith  its  present 
aims  and  purposes  cannot,  provide  the  food  and 
the  fuel  which  the  populations  of  Europe  need. 
Production  for  profit  instead  of  use  has,  by  its 
monstrous  evolution  into  Imperialism,  undone  the 
first  promise  of  plenty  which  lay  in  the  industrial 
system. 

The  idealism  of  the  League  of  Nations,  the  Chris- 
tian internationalism  of  a  Cecil,  the  humanity  of  a 
part  of  our  Liberal  press,  testify  to  the  genuineness 
of  our  English  civilization.  They  seem,  none  the 
less,  in  the  light  of  this  wilful  ruin  of  Europe,  a 
pathetic  attempt  to  build  upon  an  unsound  founda- 
tion. While  the  motive  of  profit  rules  us,  while 
competition  rather  than  social  service  is  our  law, 
while  autocracy  for  profit  in  the  workshop  answers 
to  expansion  by  force  for  gain  overseas,  in  a  word, 
while  capitalism  survives,  it  is  vain  to  dream  of  a 
genuine  internationalism.  The  motive  of  work  must 
be  changed,  and  with  the  motive  the  whole  system 
of  production. 

It  would  be  unprofitable  to  speculate  further  on 
the  question  whether  Central  Europe  is  destined  to 
pass  under  the  sway  of  the  Moscow  International, 
If  Lenin  had  had  50,000  locomotives  at  his  disposal 
at  any  time  in  this  last  two  years,  with  coal  to  run 
them,  his  frontier  to-day  would  be  the  Rhine.  It 
is  the  doubt  whether  a  blockaded  Europe  can  feed 


150  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

itself,  which  avails  to  keep  Germany,  Austria  and 
even  Italy  within  the  capitalist  system.  Transport 
is  the  fatal  obstacle.  This  at  least  is  clear,  that  if 
Europe  and  Siberia  could  be  united  under  one  fed- 
eral system  from  the  Rhine  to  Lake  Baikal,  half 
the  phenomena  of  ruin  would  disappear  with  the 
end  of  Balkanization.  Frontiers  would  go  down. 
The  provincial  egoisms  which  are  starving  Vienna 
would  vanish  with  the  petty  nationalism  on  which 
they  are  based.  Whatever  Siberia  or  the  Ukraine 
or  Hungary  had  of  grain,  whatever  Westphalia, 
Silesia  and  Teschen  had  of  coal,  would  be  distrib- 
uted, with  no  regard  for  local  selfishness,  to  satisfy 
the  general  need.  Europe  craves,  above  all,  this 
pooling  of  its  resources,  w^hich  the  Allies  are  too 
selfish,  the  League  too  weak,  to  impose.  If  Mos- 
cow had  railway  engines  and  ships,  this  one  prin- 
ciple of  solidarity  would  alone  ensure  its  victory. 
It  lacks  the  engines :  it  has  no  ships.  Its  victory  de- 
pends on  chances  too  uncertain  for  prediction.  The 
odds,  I  think,  are  against  it,  but  one  or  both  of  two 
possible  follies  might  bring  it  about  —  the  seizure 
under  French  pressure  of  the  Ruhr  and  Upper  Sil- 
esian  coal-fields,  or  the  renewal  with  French  aid  of 
the  Polish  war. 

Are  we  then,  the  reader  will  ask,  in  a  mood  of 
scientific  pessimism,  to  sit  idle,  watching  the  agony 
of  great  and  gifted  nations,  waiting  for  the  dis- 
tant day  when,  by  one  process  or  another,  the  Brit- 


CONCLUSION  151 

ish  Empire  has  become  a  Socialist  State?  Long 
before  that  transformation  has  even  begun  in  earn- 
est, the  Labor  Party  may  have  the  majority,  or  at 
.least  the  balancing  vote  in  Parliament.  What 
should  be,  in  that  event,  the  international  policy  of 
the  Labor  Party? 

To  answer  that  question  by  drafting  a  series  of 
aspirations  for  the  reform  and  revision  of  the  whole 
set  of  Paris  Treaties  would  be  at  once  easy  and  fu- 
tile. One  cannot  conduct  foreign  policy  as  one  legis- 
lates at  home.  The  revision  of  Treaties  requires  the 
consent  of  the  other  parties  to  them,  and  one  need 
hardly  point  out  that  every  one  of  the  changes  which 
we  should  demand  would  be  resisted  with  all  the 
force  of  national  egoism  by  one  or  more  of  the 
Allies.  Nor  would  it  greatly  help  us  to  summon 
a  conference  of  Governments,  in  the  hope  that  the 
general  body  of  disinterested  opinion  would  in  each 
case  vote  down  the  resistance  of  the  interested  Allies. 
They  would  see  that  danger,  and  form  a  Coalition 
to  defend  the  Treaties  in  their  integrity.  They 
would  ask  us,  moreover,  what  we  proposed  to  con- 
tribute as  our  sacrifice  to  the  general  good.  At  this 
point  our  worst  difficulties  would  begin.  The  mo- 
ment that  Labor  begins  to  give  away  anything  which 
looks  like  an  Imperial  asset,  be  it  only  a  bad  debt, 
it  will  discover  that  office  is  not  power,  and  that  a 
majority  of  the  electors  would  count  for  little  against 
the  resolute  opposition  of  most  of  the  press,  the 


152  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

House  of  Lords,  the  Court,  the  City,  the  Domin- 
ions, and  the  whole  official  class.  Weakened  by  this 
resistance  at  home,  it  would  have  little  prospect  of 
dealing  successfully  with  France,  who  would  lead 
the  opposition  to  revision.  The  task  would  demand 
almost  superhuman  adroitness  and  determination, 
and  could  be  achieved  only  by  an  appeal  to  the  opin- 
ion of  the  world's  masses,  by  every  device  of  pub- 
licity at  home  and  abroad  —  in  a  word,  by  a  miracle 
of  persuasion. 

These  might  be  some  of  the  guiding  ideas  in  our 
policy  and  tactics  : — 

1.  The  first  step  would  be  to  put  an  end  to  the 

informal  Alliance  of  the  Victors.  So  far 
as  we  know,  no  written  alliance  exists :  if 
there  are  secret  commitments,  they  must  be 
disclosed  and  denounced.  In  plain  words, 
all  the  Allies  must  understand  that  we  take 
no  further  responsibility  for  the  enforcement 
of  any  of  the  Treaties,  if  they  on  their  side 
refuse  to  bring  them  into  conformity  with 
humanity  and  economic  reason.  The  Su- 
preme Council  must  cease  to  meet,  and  mili- 
tary "  conversations  "  come  to  an  end. 

2.  Our  acts  of  sacrifice  should  be,  if  others  will 

reciprocate:  (a)  to  cancel  all  the  Allies'  debts 
to  us ;  they  are  probably  bad  debts  in  any 
case,  and  they  destroy  good  relations;  (b)  to 
forego  our  part  in  the  German  indemnity; 


CONCLUSION  153 

(c)  to  offer  to  share  out  such  prizes  of  vic- 
tory as  the  oil  of  Mesopotamia  and  the  phos- 
phates of  Nauru,  according  to  the  world's 
needs  ;  and  (d)  to  give  up  our  unlimited  right 
of  blockade,  and  reduce  our  navy  drastically, 
if  France  and  the  United  States  will  join  us 
in  accepting  and  imposing  a  genuine  and  im- 
partial scheme  of  disarmament  by  land  and 
sea. 
These   offers   will   probably    fail.     America   will 
prefer  to  retain  her  isolation,  her  navy  and  her  ab- 
solute sovereignty,  and  France  her  militarism. 

3.  We  should  next  propose  that  the  German  in- 

demnity be  reduced  to  a  possible  and  honest 
figure,  and  paid,  preferably  by  reparation  in 
kind:  (0)  in  labor  and  materials  for  the  res- 
toration  of    Northern   France,   and    (b)    in 
coal  (including  the  yield  of  the  Saar)  to  bal- 
ance the  destruction  of  the  French  mines. 
If  France  refuses,  as  she  probably  would,  to  make 
these  concessions,  we  should  withdraw  our  troops 
from  the  Rhine,  and  wash  our  hands  of  the  conse- 
quences to  France. 

4.  Our  positive  policy  for  the  restoration  of  Con- 

tinental Civilization  should  then  take  the 
form  of  the  foundation  of  an  Economic 
League.  The  League  of  Nations,  as  it  now 
exists,  is  all  but  useless,  if  America  will  ac- 
cept   its    Covenant   only   with    reservations 


154  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

which  destroy  it,  while  France  is  avowedly 
hostile  to  the  whole  idea,  and  Germany  and 
Russia  remain  outside. 
The  purpose  of  this  Economic  League  should  be, 
by  the  rationing  of  raw  materials  and  the  breaking 
down  of  every  artificial  barrier  to  exchange,  to  con- 
stitute a  vast  economic  unit,  and  so  undo  the  mis- 
chief of  Balkanization.  The  intention  would  be  to 
include  the  British  Empire,  Germany,  Russia,  Italy, 
and  all  the  former  Hapsburg  States,  and  any  other 
State  which  cares  to  join.  Admission  would  in- 
volve, on  our  part  and  theirs,  the  abandonment  of 
all  nationalist  policies  of  monopoly.  It  would  im- 
ply (o)  the  rationing  of  raw  materials,  especially 
coal,  grain,  oil  and  fertilizers;  (b)  mutual  aid  in 
transport ;  (c)  some  control  of  industry,  so  that, 
for  example,  the  whole  productive  capacity  of  both 
the  British  and  the  German  workshops  could  be 
mobilized  to  turn  out,  for  all  the  members  of  the 
League,  locomotives,  motor-ploughs  and  other 
tools  ^ ;  and  (d)  the  distribution  of  these  instru- 
ments of  production,  if  necessary  on  long  credit, 
according  to  need,  (e)  This  would  involve  an 
international  loan. 

The  governing  idea  of  this  League  would  be  that 
the  urban  civilization  of  Europe  can  be  saved  only 

1  While  all  Europe  cries  out  for  agricultural  machinery, 
there  are  3,000  unemployed  in  the  engineering  workshops  of 
Lincoln. 


CONCLUSION  155 

by  a  united  effort,  and  that  it  is  to  the  interest  of  us 
all  to  stimulate  the  utmost  productivity  of  Siberian 
or  Ukrainian  agriculture.  Towards  Germany  the 
policy  would  be  not  merely  to  reverse  the  egoism  of 
the  Treaty,  but  positively  to  foster  every  form  of 
production  in  Central  Europe,  industrial  or  agri- 
cultural, in  order  to  meet  the  common  need. 

How  France  would  react  to  such  a  policy  it  is 
difficult  to  foresee.  She  dreads  isolation,  and  a  firm 
front  might  impress  her,  but  more  probably  she 
would  reckon  (with  much  encouragement  from  the 
Opposition  among  ourselves)  on  the  early  collapse 
of  the  Labor  Government  and  the  reversal  of  its 
policy.  In  that  case  a  rivalry  would  ensue  in  Eu- 
rope between  her  military  League  and  our  Economic 
League.  She  would  try  to  promote  the  reaction 
everywhere,  for  example,  by  fostering  monarchist 
clericalism  in  Bavaria,  Austria  and  Hungary.  We 
should  then  have  to  counter  her  intrigues,  for  exam- 
ple, by  supporting  the  union  of  Austria  with  Ger- 
many, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Treaty  forbids 
it.  The  military  dangers  of  such  a  rivalry  are  ob- 
vious. 

"  This  program,"  the  reader  may  say,  "  is  a  re~ 
ductio  ad  ahsurdiim.  The  somewhat  similar  pro- 
posals in  Mr.  Keynes'  book  read  smoothly  enough, 
because  he  confined  himself  to  economics.  You 
have  introduced  also  the  political  and  military  ques- 
tions.    Do  you,  frankly,  see  the  Labor  Party  under 


156  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

Its  present  Parliamentary  leaders  following  a  spirited 
policy  of  this  kind,  with  the  Times  thundering  at 
them  every  day,  and  the  exchange  sinking?  " 

I  am  not  sanguine  of  the  success  of  such  a  policy 
in  the  hands  of  either  the  Labor  Party  or  even  of 
the  Labor  Party  allied  with  the  remnants  of  Liber- 
alism. 

1  believe,  however,  that  the  British  Empire,  under 
firm  leadership,  could  even  at  this  late  hour,  by  the 
adoption  of  such  a  policy,  save  Europe,  force  the 
revision  of  the  Treaties,  restore  the  productivity  of 
the  Continent,  and  bring  back  the  glories  of  its 
civilization.  If  it,  as  a  solid  unit,  were  known  to 
be  resolved  on  this  course,  it  has  the  strength  to 
carry  it  through  single-handed,  and  that  without  the 
smallest  risk  of  war. 

I  have  spoken  of  "  sacrifices."  The  word  is  de- 
ceptive. Some  momentary  renunciation  there  might 
be.  In  the  end,  when  after  two  or  three  years  of 
intensive  effort,  the  grain  ships  filed  again  through 
the  Turkish  Straits  from  Odessa,  and  a  continuous 
procession  of  trains  carried  the  harvests  and  the 
dairy  produce  of  Siberia  to  the  West,  as  the  grass 
ceased  to  grow  on  the  quays  of  Hamburg,  and 
Vienna  sang  again  at  its  work,  we  should  laugh  at 
the  suggestion  of  sacrifice.  Plenty  would  return, 
and  with  falling  prices,  wages  would  gain  in  value. 
Under  a  great  leader,  who  had  the  whole  Empire 
with  him,  we  could  bring  back  the  reality  of  peace 


CONCLUSION  157 

to  the  world.  It  would  demand  audacity,  will,  imag- 
ination. It  could  not  be  carried  through,  unless  we 
were  ready,  after  first  cleansing  our  own  hands  of 
greedy  gains,  to  face  French  militarism  and  cir- 
cumvent it.  It  might  end  not  merely  in  the  eco- 
nomic restoration  of  Europe,  but  in  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  League  of  Nations  on  a  surer  basis,  with 
the  conscious  soul  of  mutual  aid  for  the  breath  of 
its  Hfe. 

So  far  I  have  faith.  What  I  doubt  is  whether 
any  party,  whatever  its  majority,  be  it  Labor,  Liber- 
alism, or  both  together,  can  ever  hope  to  wield  the 
power  of  the  British  Empire  for  any  humane  end, 
which  seems  on  a  narrow  view  to  conflict  with  the 
interests  of  our  capitalist  governing  class. 

Let  us,  none  the  less,  make  the  experiment  with 
all  the  resolution  and  all  the  contriving  intelligence 
we  possess.  Nothing  in  domestic  politics  touches 
the  importance  of  this  issue,  whether  the  civiliza- 
tion of  Europe  shall  be  destroyed  by  Capitalist  Im- 
perialism. Let  us  seek  all  the  Allies  we  can  dis- 
cover, be  they  Liberal  or  Tory.  One  does  not  play 
at  party  games  when  millions  of  one's  fellows  are 
perishing  before  one's  eyes.  The  chance  may  come 
too  late  as  the  years  lengthen  out.  It  may  find  us 
too  weak,  when  at  length  it  arrives.  It  may  come 
only  to  demonstrate  that  the  power  of  wealth  in  a 
Parliamentary  democracy  can  frustrate  the  good- 
will of  the  many.     In  that  event,  the  question  of 


158  AFTER  THE  PEACE 

this  book  will  be  answered.  The'  sentence  will  be 
written,  that  by  its  greed  of  profits,  by  its  militarism 
and  imperialism.  Capitalism  has  evolved  on  suicidal 
lines,  that  it  cannot  produce  the  goods  which  man- 
kind demands,  or  feed  the  populations  of  Europe. 
That  sentence  will  be  cast  in  one  of  two  forms.  It 
may  ring  out  -as  the  rallying  cry  of  a  revolution. 
It  may  stand  upon  the  tombstone  of  a  defeated  civil- 
ization. 


THE  END — ' 


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